


Cold Day in the Sun

by Robin_tCJ



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU-Canon divergence, Anal Sex, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Cap_Ironman Big Bang 2016, Explicit Sexual Content, Feelings of guilt, Flashbacks, M/M, Multiverse, Multiverse Theory, Nightmares, Not Age of Ultron Compliant, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, Oral Sex, POV Changes, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Present Tense, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 21:52:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8595085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_tCJ/pseuds/Robin_tCJ
Summary: In an alternate universe, Steve Rogers fell from the train during World War II instead of Bucky Barnes. Bucky took up the mantle of Captain America, while Steve became the new fist of HYDRA, the Winter Soldier. When Steve resurfaces and HYDRA falls, how will Steve reintegrate into society? How will he come to terms with the past, his actions, and find his way back to being Steve? And how will he and Tony deal with their developing feelings for one another?





	1. Introduction: You're So Afraid That You're The Only One

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to [imafriendlydalek](http://archiveofourown.org/users/imafriendlydalek/profile) for the amazing job betaing this. It would have been garbage without her. Probably. Any remaining mistakes are my own fault.
> 
> Divergent around The Winter Soldier, meaning we haven't yet been introduced to Clint's family, meaning they don't exist, and I'm ignoring them completely. Sorry Laura. You're a badass, but your existence puts a damper on my setting. Therefore, in this particular alternate universe, Clint didn’t marry you. Also, even though technically The Winter Soldier takes place after the events of Iron Man 3, the events of Iron Man 3 did not happen in this fic the way they did in canon, so Tony still has the arc reactor.
> 
> I got to work with two amazing artists here, [Fan](http://fantalaimon.tumblr.com) and [Cazdinal](http://cazdraws.tumblr.com). They were both wonderful to work with, and did amazing art to go with the story. I will be embedding the images into the story, along with a link so that those who download it to read on a mobile app will have the option of clicking the link and seeing the art. I’ll also put the art in the end notes, so it’s all in one spot. It’s kinda spoilery, so view at your own peril!

If the multiverse theory allowed for a linear comprehension regarding direction, then Earth-199998 would best be explained as just a slight shift to the left of Earth-199999. On Earth-199999, Steven Grant Rogers was chosen for Project Rebirth, a highly classified United States government project, in 1943. In the government's quest to create an army of Super Soldiers to defeat Hydra and the Nazis during World War II, they employed the services of the Strategic Scientific Reserve and scientists Dr. Abraham Erskine and Howard Stark. Erskine and Stark developed a process to give soldiers enhanced biology, including an injectable serum and a radiation chamber that emitted a proprietary Stark technology called Vita-Rays.

As on Earth-199999, Rogers was chosen specifically by Erskine to be the project’s first test subject, despite reservations from the U.S. Army's liaison to the program, Colonel Chester Phillips. Erskine was killed by a Hydra assassin directly after the procedure, and the remaining serum was destroyed in the ensuing fight. Erskine's formula was lost, leaving Rogers the only soldier to go through Project Rebirth. The project was disbanded, and Rogers was utilized by the USO under the persona of Captain America to help drum up support and war bond sales.

Further similarities between Earth-199999 and Earth-199998 include Captain Rogers' USO tour overseas and his impromptu, unsanctioned rescue mission of the army's 107th reserve in Italy; in particular, his rescue of childhood friend, Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.

On Earth-199998, Sergeant Barnes had, as on Earth-199999, been experimented on, tortured, and injected with a Hydra-made version of Erskine's super soldier serum during his captivity by Hydra's top scientist, Arnim Zola. Captain Rogers rescued him from the Hydra base, along with the rest of the 107th. Barnes, Rogers, and a group of soldiers called the Howling Commandos became the Allies' elite ops team, working to take out Hydra bases and weapons factories during the war.

It was during one of those missions that Earth-199998 diverged from the timeline of Earth-199999.

On both Earths, the Howling Commandos were attempting to capture Arnim Zola on a moving train when Sergeant Barnes, sniper and best friend of Captain America, was hit by a Hydra soldier and fell through a hole in the side of the train car.

On Earth-199999, Captain Rogers was unable to grasp Sergeant Barnes' hand and pull him to safety. Barnes fell from the train, into a ravine, to what was most assuredly his death.

On Earth-199998, Captain Rogers _ was _ able to grasp Sergeant Barnes' hand and pull him to safety – just before he slipped and fell from the train himself. Barnes, heartbroken and guilt-ridden, agreed to the SSR's request that he don the Captain America identity and pick up the iconic vibranium shield in an attempt to keep morale up among the Allied troops. It was suggested that the death of Captain America would be a blow too strong to recover from, and someone had to wear the cowl in order to keep the masses from realizing their hero had been lost.

So James Barnes sat in a blown-out pub, trying to get drunk on expensive scotch, while Agent Peggy Carter of the SSR drank with him, both mourning Captain Rogers.

Due to Rogers' death, Barnes assumed the mantle of Captain America – and the rank promotion that came with it – and took over command of the Howling Commandos, working with them to defeat Hydra. At the time, Project Rebirth files were altered and redacted to show that Captain James Buchanan Barnes had been the one and only Captain America. Those records were declassified again in 1957, years after Barnes' heroic death. At the Smithsonian Museum today, the Captain America exhibit shows the impressive missions, and deaths, of both Barnes and Rogers. The files claim that Captain James Buchanan Barnes had been the army's test subject, not Hydra's, but otherwise they are relatively accurate. Barnes, as the second Captain America, went down in a Hydra plane after defeating Johann Schmidt, also known as The Red Skull. It was Barnes who spent 70 years in the ice before being rescued by SHIELD and awakening in 2012.

This small shift in the timeline of this particular universe led to several other differences from Earth-199999. In the 1960s, an entire wing in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington was devoted to Captain Rogers, Captain Barnes and the Howling Commandos. It showed both Rogers' ascension to become the world's first superhero, and Barnes' succession after his death.

This exhibit remained unchanged until after the Battle of New York, when Captain America's story was updated to include the details of that battle – or, at least, the publicly released details. Captain Barnes, now a member of SHIELD's Avengers Project, led his team to victory during the alien invasion of 2012. The team, consisting of two SHIELD agents, an Asgardian god of thunder, a scientist whose self-experimentation had led to an alarming condition, and a genius billionaire with a flying suit of armour, managed to save New York and the rest of the world from alien domination.

The declassified files, of course, do not mention the nuclear missile that Tony Stark redirected into space. They do not mention Clint Barton's brainwashing and recovery, or that Loki, Thor's adopted brother, was responsible for the invasion. They don't mention the argument on the helicarrier between Barnes and Stark, when Stark purposely let slip that his father's journals outline the government's deception regarding the true nature of Barnes' enhanced abilities, and that his talents were obtained via Hydra experiments as opposed to American experimentation. They don't mention that Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, was one of only five living people who knew the truth about it, including Stark and Barnes himself, until the conversation took place in that laboratory.

The public files do, however, outline how the Avengers came together as a team, vanquished their foes, and would continue to keep Earth safe from nefarious outside forces. They don’t explain that the Avengers, upon their triumph, were invited to stay on the residential floors of Stark Tower, renamed Avengers Tower, by Tony Stark, and that Natasha Romanov was the last Avenger to agree to the living arrangements.

Some information never makes it into SHIELD's files at all, classified or not. There is no evidence, for example, outlining how, when escorting that nuclear missile into space, Tony Stark had tried calling his significant other, Pepper Potts, or that when Captain Barnes found out she'd never answered the phone call, he suggested Stark speak to her about it. With that information kept out of the recorded history, of course, said history does not contain the follow-up information that it was during that ensuing argument that Ms. Potts and Mr. Stark ended their romantic entanglement in favour of keeping their relationship friendly and platonic.

The SHIELD files also don't have the information that, while he was more than happy to take credit, the idea that the Avengers should all live together in Avengers Tower was not, in fact, the suggestion of Tony Stark, but at the urging of Captain Barnes. Barnes' motives are, of course, unknown, but if one were to hazard a guess, one might assume the suggestion was somehow related to the fact that Barnes, a reportedly very social and outgoing man in his youth, was lonely. Not that he would admit it.

Natasha Romanov also made sure to keep it out of her reports that, during what is described as a rescue mission on the Lemurian Star in the Indian Ocean, Captain Barnes saved her from an incendiary device and then kissed her. She certainly didn't include that she had kissed him back.

The SHIELD records do point out that Nick Fury read Captain Barnes in on the Project Insight program, but the records don't extrapolate Barnes' distaste for the program.

When Nick Fury is attacked during his afternoon commute by a strong, fast assassin with an arm made of something stronger than steel, he calls Captain Barnes and asks him to meet at a safe house, rather than the SHIELD barracks Barnes is currently staying in while he's in Washington to debrief after the Lemurian Star mission – keeping said meeting out of SHIELD's records in doing so. Barnes uses the version of JARVIS that Stark had installed on his phone to find his way with the texted coordinates and walks into the apartment to find Fury curled in on himself, obviously nursing bruised ribs and a broken arm, covered in blood and tense with pain.

Fury uses the text screen of his phone to inform Barnes that SHIELD is compromised, and tells Barnes not to trust anyone. He says the safe house is under surveillance. The window bursts in, and Barnes hears the sound of two slugs embedding themselves in flesh just before Fury drops forward on the floor, a heavy, dead weight.

Barnes turns him over, and takes the offered flash drive, and looks up at the door to the apartment when a blonde woman in tactical black bursts through the door.

“Who the fuck are you?” Barnes asks her, jaw clenched as he tries to staunch the director's bleeding with his hands.

“Agent 13 of SHIELD. I've been tailing you.”

“On whose authority?”

“His,” she says, nodding at the prone man on the floor. “Where's the shooter?”

Barnes jerks his chin toward the shattered window, and Agent 13 kneels down beside Fury to put pressure on his wounds. “I'll call for a medic. You go after him.”

Barnes doesn't hesitate – as much as he and Fury may not always see eye to eye, he has a job to do.

He is, after all, Captain America.

Barnes chases the assassin across several rooftops before he throws his shield in a desperate attempt to slow the man down. The man catches it with a metal fist, then throws it back at Barnes with an expertise he's not used to seeing in anyone who's never handled the shield before.

When Barnes next looks up, the assassin is gone.


	2. Captain America: The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan

Fury lies on an operating table while machines squeal and a doctor announces time of death, and Natasha buries her face in Bucky's shoulder in her grief. Maria Hill stands stoically behind the glass, unable to speak. Tony and Clint arrive shortly after on the quinjet from New York, and Bucky keeps the drive in his pocket when Natasha confronts him in the hallway. Bucky wonders who will have the misfortune of telling Thor when he's back on-planet, or Bruce when he gets back from India.

“Why were you meeting with Fury in the safe house?” she asks him.

“I don't know,” he lies. “He didn't get a chance to tell me.”

She stares at him, but he holds his ground long enough for Agent Rumlow to tell him SHIELD wants to speak with him.

He meets her eye, just for a few moments, then turns on his heel and leaves.

“You're a terrible liar,” she calls after him. He doesn't slow down.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Rumlow and the rest of the Strike team escort Bucky to the Triskelion, where Alexander Pierce is waiting in his office to debrief him.

“Nick Fury was a very good friend of mine,” Pierce tells him. “Captain Barnes, it's very important to me that I find out who killed my friend.”

“I didn't get a good look at him,” Bucky says. “He was wearing a mask.”

Pierce watches him for a few moments, then stands up. “Captain, why did Nick want to meet with you last night?”

“I don't know. We never got that far.”

“Did you know the safe house was bugged?”

“I did. Nick told me it was.”

“Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?”

Bucky stares at him.

“I want you to see something,” Pierce says, using a remote to turn on a small holoscreen behind them where Georges Batroc is being interrogated. Bucky realizes they must have captured him after his escape from the Lemurian Star.

“They picked him up last night in Algiers,” Pierce explains.

“You think he killed Nick? Assassination isn't Batroc's thing.”

“ No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the  Lemurian Star. He was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech.”

“Who the hell is Jacob Veech?” Bucky asks. Pierce hands him a file folder, which he flips open.

“Not likely. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived at 14-37,” Pierce says.

“You saying Nick hired Batroc? Why the fuck would he do that?”

“Well, the prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death.”

“Bullshit. I don't believe that for a fucking second.”

“Why do you think we're talking? See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to, but because Nick asked me to. Because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies. Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry.” Pierce pauses for a moment. “Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?”

“He told me not to trust anybody.”

“I wonder if that included him,” Pierce says, holding Bucky's gaze.

Bucky doesn't look away. After a moment, he says, “That's the last thing he said before he was shot.” Bucky stands up and moves toward the door.

“Captain. Somebody murdered my friend, and I'm going to find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they're going to regret it,” Pierce tells him with a pointed look. “Anyone.”

“I hear you,” Bucky says, leaving the room.

He heads for the elevator.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Bucky enters the empty elevator, his mind reeling. Could Fury really have been dirty? He supposes it's not that far-fetched. Nick Fury was, after all, the spy to end all spies. But Clint and Natasha trusted him, and Bucky doesn't take their opinions lightly.

As he waits for the doors to close, a hand pops in, halting the doors and opening them to reveal Rumlow and two other members of the Strike team.

“Forensics,” Rumlow tells the elevator, before turning to Bucky. “Cap,” he says, a curt greeting.

“Rumlow,” Bucky nods as the doors close.

Rumlow turns to Bucky, arms crossed. “Evidence response found some fibres on the roof they want us to see,” he says. “You want me to get the tac team ready?”

“Not yet. Keep me in the loop, though,” Bucky says.

“You got it,” Rumlow answers.

One of the other agents rests an idle hand on the butt of his stun baton. The elevator stops again, and four more men get in. Two of them are in suits, but Bucky thinks he recognizes them from one of the other tactical teams.

Bucky looks around, concern niggling at the back of his mind.

Rumlow glances at him over his shoulder as the elevator continues its descent. “Sorry about what happened with Fury. Messed up, what happened to him.”

Bucky doesn't answer. A bead of sweat materializes on an agent's temple, and Bucky tenses. The car stops again, and three more agents from the Strike team step in – including Agent Rollins.

Bucky looks around. He's surrounded by agents, including the top two members of the Strike team.

“Before we start,” Bucky sighs, hands clenching, “does anyone wanna keep their necks?”

Rollins wheels around, stun baton lashing out toward Bucky's stomach, and Bucky dodges, only to be grabbed around both arms and his neck.

The fight is terribly unfair, Bucky thinks, as one of the agents tries to lock his arm to the elevator wall with a mag cuff. He kicks out, whirls with a punch, hits out with an elbow and a fist, then relieves one of the agents of his stun baton before jabbing at another agent with it. He goes down, and Bucky drops to a crouch, swinging a leg out to bring two more agents down with him.

Rumlow kicks out, and Bucky finds his arm locked to the wall with the mag cuff after all, and isn't able to dodge when Rumlow comes at him with the baton, teeth gritting as the shock blasts through his body.

Then it's another elbow out, a split kick, and he manages to free his wrist, lashing out at another agent.

Rumlow stands up, a baton in each hand. “Just want you to know, Cap, this ain't personal.”

Even as he says it, he lashes out with one baton, then the other. Bucky dodges, dodges again, takes a shot to the stomach, then manages to knee Rumlow in the gut before he grabs the shield and uses the flat surface to hit Rumlow in the back of the head. He falls to the floor, and doesn't get back up.

“Fuck you, not personal,” he pants, looking around at the unconscious agents around him.

Bucky hits the emergency stop button, starting the elevator car down again. The door opens almost immediately to a group of agents in riot gear, assault weapons pointed directly at Bucky. He whirls to the side, away from the line of fire, before using the shield to punch through the side of the elevator and cut the cables.

The elevator free falls until the emergency brakes kick in, and it comes to a stop. Bucky glances at the doors, but he has a feeling the entire building is going to have a similar reception. He leaps up to the ceiling of the elevator and slips out the emergency hatch, finding himself in the glass elevator shaft. He climbs the wall for a couple of floors, then finds a maintenance level where he can move across to the interior elevator, and glances up and down the shaft. That car is above him, so he grabs onto the suspension cables and, protecting the palm of his glove by twisting the mag cuff still attached to his wrist, slides down the cable.

When he reaches the parking garage level, he heads straight for his motorbike and manages to drive out just before the lockdown doors slam down on him. Of course, then he has to fight a quinjet.

Fuckin' SHIELD.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Bucky goes back to the hospital to collect the flash drive he'd stashed in the vending machine. Natasha walks up behind him, popping her gum, as he stares at the empty slot, and wiggles the drive at him. He crowds her into an empty room, holding her against the wall.

She gives him a flirty grin, the look sly and calculating, and bats her eyelashes.

“What did you do with it?” he asks her.

“It's somewhere safe,” she responds.

He gets right up in her face, doing his best to ignore the attractive flush of her skin. “What the fuck, Nat?”

“Where did you get it?” she asks him instead of answering.

“None of your fucking business,” he growls.

“Fury gave it to you,” she says. _ How does she always fucking know, _ he thinks. “Why?

“What's on it?” he responds.

“I don't know.”

“Stop fucking lying to me,” he hisses.

“I only act like I know everything, James,” she says, furrowing her perfect eyebrows.

“You know Fury hired the pirates?”

She shrugs. “The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in. It makes sense.”

“I'm not going to ask you again.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”

“So he's a ghost story.”

“Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot at my tires near Odessa,” she says. “We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me.” She pulls up the hem of her shirt, and he can see the little puckered scar there.

“A Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis.”

“Oh, I bet you still look pretty good in one,” he grins slyly, pressing closer.

“Going after him is a dead end,” she continues. “I know, I've tried. Like you said, he's a ghost story.”

She holds up the drive, and Bucky takes it out of her hand.

“Let's find out what he's after.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

“Should we call Tony? Or Clint?” Natasha asks as they drive to the nearest mall.

Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fury told me not to trust anyone.”

“That includes me? Them? After everything we've been through together?

Bucky shrugs. “We'll call them in when it's time. For right now, we just need more information.”

Natasha doesn't say anything for the rest of the drive. When they stop, she hands him a hat and a pair of glasses, and slips on a striped sweater. Then she hands him a pair of tennis shoes.

He glances down at his combat boots. “What's wrong with what I'm wearing?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “We're supposed to be incognito, James. A guy walking around the mall in combat boots is too conspicuous, they'll pick you out in an instant.

Bucky sighs and changes his shoes, and they walk into the mall. Natasha leads them straight toward the Apple store.

When his pace starts to pick up, she slows him down. “First rule of going on the run is: don't run, walk.”

Bucky glares at her. “Like I can fuckin' run in these shoes and keep 'em on.”

She smirks at him as they enter the store. She stands in front of one of the display laptops, holding the flash drive up for his perusal. “This drive has a level six homing program so as soon as we boot up, SHIELD will know exactly where we are.”

“How fast?”

“About nine minutes from now,” she says, popping the drive into the laptop. Her eyes roam over the screen quickly as she taps a few keys. “Fury was right about that ship; somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI; it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands.”

“Can you override it?” he asks, glancing around.

“The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me,” she answers. She glances up at him. “Slightly. I'm going to try running a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from.”

Bucky's about to ask how quickly she can track it when a long-haired man comes up beside them. “Can I help you guys with anything?”

“Oh, no,” Natasha says, smiling prettily. “My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations.”

Bucky doesn't say anything, but angles his body in close to Natasha, like a lover.

“You're getting married? Congratulations. Where are you guys thinking about going?”

Bucky glances at the screen, and sees the trace is honing in on somewhere in New Jersey.

“Jersey,” he says tersely.

The man's face looks confused for a moment. “You know, I have the exact same glasses,” he says, looking at Bucky.

“Wow, you two are practically twins,” Natasha says, syrupy.

“Yeah, I wish,” the guy says, looking Bucky up and down. “Specimen.” Bucky's fist clenches. “If you guys need anything, I've been Aaron.”

Bucky tries his most menacing glare, and Aaron the Apple store employee walks away.

“You said nine minutes,” Bucky says, glancing around. “I'm pretty sure we're past nine.”

“Relax, I got it.” She looks at the screen, and Bucky looks, too. “You know it?” she asks him.

Bucky shakes his head. “Nah. We'll go find out what it is.”

Bucky pulls the drive out and starts walking, trusting Natasha to follow him. He glances around as they walk through the mall and sees SHIELD agents casing the mall. They're dressed in civvies, but they're not exactly subtle.

“Standard tac team,” he says. “Two behind, two across, two coming straight at us. If they spot us, I'll fuck 'em up and you hit the escalator to the metro. We'll meet up later.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, steps in close to him. “Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said.”

Bucky glances at her, glances back up at the agents headed for them, and complies with her instructions. She laughs along with him, and Bucky's sure they're made. But they keep walking, and the agents go by them without turning.

“That really shouldn't have worked,” he mutters as they reach the escalator. They step on, and it's crowded. Bucky spots Rumlow on the escalator beside them, headed straight up toward them.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“Kiss me,” she says, turning into him.

“Excuse me?”

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.”

Bucky leans down and presses his lips to hers, taking a sharp breath. They'd kissed before, once, during the  Lemurian Star mission, but this is different somehow. There's _ intent _ .

He lets his tongue slip out and sip at her bottom lip, and is rewarded with a slight hitch in her breath before she pulls away, staring at him for a moment. Bucky blinks and glances around, sees that Rumlow is still on the up escalator, and hadn't noticed them.

“Come on,” she says, taking hold of his hand and leading him out to the parking lot.

Bucky hot wires a pick-up while Natasha watches him, bemused, and they hop in and head for New Jersey.

“Where did Captain America learn to steal a car?” she asks, propping her feet up on the dashboard.

“Nazi Germany,” he says, deadpan. “We all had to know how.” He glares pointedly at her feet, and she rolls her eyes, placing them back on the floor.

“We gonna talk about how we keep kissing?” he asks her after a moment.

Natasha shrugs. “We don't have to.”

“What if I want to?”

“Then we can talk,” she answers, looking out the window.

For a minute, he doesn't know what to say. He glances at her. “You know, I used to be a bit of a ladies' man,” he finally says. She smirks, not looking at him. He looks back at the road. “I'd always be out with girls, dancing and having a good time. You know, I haven't had a date since I came out of the ice?”

She looks at him. “Not one?”

He shakes his head. “Tough to find someone with similar life experience.”

“Well, that's all right. You just make something up.”

“Like you do?”

“I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I.”

“That's a shitty way to live.”

“Good way not to die, though.”

“It's hard to trust someone when you don't know who they really are.”

“Who do you want me to be?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“I want you to be you. I wanna find out who that is.”

“What if you don't like her?”

“So far, she's doing all right,” he says with a smirk.

 

\+ + + + +

 

They pull up to a military base when it's dark out. It's long-abandoned, and Bucky looks around. “These things are all laid out the same, aren't they?” he asks as they pick their way through the overgrown brush.

“Look much like your training base?”

He shrugs. “It's similar enough.”

Natasha looks around, holding some kind of sensor reader. “This is a dead end,” she says, sighing. “Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off.”

Bucky glances to the left, then does a double-take. That ammunitions storage building is way too close to the barracks. “Let's try in there,” he says, nodding his chin toward it.

She glances at him from the side of her eyes, then shrugs, gesturing for him to lead the way. He breaks the lock on the door with his shield and they step inside. When she reaches out to turn on the lights, they see it's set up like an office bullpen.

“This is SHIELD,” she says, looking around, nodding her chin at the SHIELD insignia stencilled on the wall.

“Maybe where it started,” he says, moving into the next room. There are framed portraits of Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Col. Phillips.

“There's Stark's father,” Natasha says, nodding at the Howard portrait. “Who's the girl?”

Bucky looks at it with a sad smile on his face. “Peggy Carter. Steve was so sweet on her,” he says.

“Steve Rogers? The first Captain America?”

Bucky grins. “That's the one. She got drunk with me after he died. Well, she got drunk, I couldn't.” He shrugs. “Not for lack of trying.”

Bucky moves toward a bookshelf and pushes at it. It reveals an elevator behind it.

“Secret bunker,” he grins, gleeful at the discovery. They step into the elevator and it takes them to a lower level.

The computers in the room are old. It doesn't mean much to Bucky, but Natasha glances around in dismay.

“This can't be the data point, this technology is ancient,” she says. She plugs the flash drive into a device anyway, and the machinery starts the loud process of booting up.

_ Initiate system? _ the computer clips out.

“Y-E-S spells yes,” she says.

“Shall we play a game?” Bucky intones with a grin. She stares at him for a moment. “What? You were with me when I watched it.”

“Barnes, James, born 1917. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984.” A German-accented voice comes out of the computer as an ancient-looking surveillance camera moves in their direction.

“It's some kind of recording,” Natasha says, thoughtful.

“I am not a recording, Fräulein,” it says. “I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I _ am _ ...” The computer flashes a picture of Dr. Arnim Zola. Bucky's fists and jaw clench hard.

“Zola,” he breathes.

“You know this thing?”

“Arnim Zola was the Hydra scientist who experimented on me. He's been dead for years.”

“Look around you,” the computer says. “I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, that was worth saving... on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain.”

“How did you get here?” Bucky asks, looking around.

Natasha glances at him. “Operation Paperclip, after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic values.”

“They thought I could help their cause,” Zola says from the screen. “I also helped my own.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “Hydra?”

“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”

“I don't believe you,” Bucky spits out.

“Accessing archive.” The screen shows old footage of Schmidt, of Howard, of Peggy. “Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years Hydra has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.”

“That's impossible. SHIELD would have stopped you,” Natasha says.

The screen shows a newspaper clipping dated December 17, 1991. It's front page news that Howard and Maria Stark were killed in a car accident the day before. A file pops up showing Fury's death.

Bucky smashes his shield down on the screen, and Zola's face pops up on another one. “As I was saying,” he continues. “What's on this drive? Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm.”

“What kind of algorithm?” Natasha asks. “What does it do?”

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it.” The doors slam shut, and Bucky grabs Natasha, aiming for what looks like a small cellar. “Admit it, Captain – it's better this way. We're both of us...out of time,” Zola says. Bucky rolls his eyes and jumps into the cellar with Natasha, holding the heavy door over them as the walls shake, the building exploding.

He pulls her out once the dust settles, carrying her out toward the truck, just as he can hear the Strike team converging on their location. He gets them out of sight at the same moment he hears Rumlow speak into a comm.

“Call in the asset,” Rumlow says.

 

\+ + + + +

 

When Bucky met Sam Wilson, he knew he'd met a man with a good heart. They'd met during Bucky's first morning in Washington, before the Lemurian Star mission, when he went for a run. He'd seen Sam again before Nick died, at the Veteran Affairs centre where Sam volunteers.

So when he and Natasha need a place to lie low, they go to Sam's. Sam welcomes them with open arms, even though it's ridiculously early. By the time Bucky gets out of the shower Sam has so graciously offered them both, Tony and Clint are sitting in the living room with Natasha and Sam, who's looking a little shell-shocked.

Bucky doesn't say anything, running his fingers through his hair.

“So,” Tony sighs. “SHIELD's evil, then?”

“Natasha filled you in,” Bucky says, not really making it a question.

“Well, _ someone _ had to,” Clint says, crossing his thick arms across his chest.

“I'd say I was hurt you didn't trust us, Cap, if I thought it would make a difference,” Tony says, bouncing his knee.

Bucky gives Natasha a little glare. She shrugs, unconcerned. “You knew I was always going to tell Clint,” she says.

“How did you even find us?”

Tony snorts. “It's funny how you think I didn't put a private-signature GPS coded directly to JARVIS on each of your persons, in multiple configurations,” he says, waving a hand dismissively.

“Where?” Bucky demands. “I've changed my clothes, my shoes, I've showered. How did you keep a tracker on me?”

Tony doesn't answer, but he does stare pointedly across the room at Bucky's shield, where it's propped up against Sam's living room wall.

“Don't worry, we've already had words about hidden GPS trackers being placed on spies,” Natasha says, with a glare at Tony.

Tony rolls his eyes. “I told you, it's not hackable.”

“Until it is,” she snarls.

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Tony says with a deep sigh. “What we need to talk about right now is how you two kept valuable information from your fellow Avengers, and almost got yourselves _ blown up _ instead of calling your _ computer genius _ team member in order to crack your little flash drive, there.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “We're obviously fine.”

“You got lucky,” Tony growls.

“I still can't figure out why you didn't call me,” Clint says to Natasha.

“I would have,” Natasha shrugs. “I was letting James take point on it.”

Clint raises an eyebrow at her. Her face colours a little, and Bucky is enamoured by it.

“Okay, fine, clean slate,” Tony says, clapping his hands together. “No more fighting.”

“I'm making breakfast. If you guys want any,” Sam says, standing up and heading for the kitchen. Clint perks up significantly.

“Is there coffee?” he asks.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Once they've eaten scrambled eggs and a ridiculous amount of toast, and Natasha and Bucky have filled Tony, Clint and Sam in on the rest of the details of their experiences, Tony pours himself another cup of coffee.

“So, who in SHIELD could and would launch a domestic missile strike?” Natasha says, leaning back.

“Well, the World Security Council have a history with that sort of thing,” Tony says, brow tight.

“And Pierce follows their orders, right? So: Pierce,” Bucky says.

“Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world,” Natasha reminds him.

“Okay, but Pierce isn't working alone. Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star,” Clint says.

“So was Jasper Sitwell,” Natasha says, meeting Clint's eye. Clint's eyes tighten, but he doesn't break her gaze.

Bucky glances between the two of them for a moment. He knows the two of them have several friends at SHIELD, and there’s a good chance Sitwell is one of them. “So, the real question is, how do we get ahold of Sitwell to question him?”

Sam drops a folder in front of Bucky. “I want to help.”

“What's this?” he asks, picking it up.

“Call it a resume,” Sam says, crossing his arms. Tony snatches the folder out of Bucky's hands and opens it up, glancing quickly at the photos, files, and schematics. His head bounces up to meet Sam's eyes.

“You're the EXO-7 survivor,” he breathes. He looks a little torn apart.

Sam gives a curt nod.

“Is this Bakhmala?” Natasha asks. “The Khalid Khandil mission. That was you.” She glares at Bucky. “You didn't say he was para-rescue.”

Bucky shrugs and looks at the photo of Sam with his arm around another man, grinning. “This Riley?”

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“It was a Stark Industries project. Two test operators. Several successful missions, and then one disaster. The military retired the project, and we recycled some of the technology for drones,” Tony says.

“I thought you were a pilot,” Bucky says, narrowing his eyes at Sam.

“I never said 'pilot.'”

“Sam,” Bucky starts to protest. “You got out for a reason. Besides, we've already got a flyer.” He gestures at Tony.

“Dude, the Avengers need my help. There's no better reason to get back in.”

“Plus, they'll be expecting me,” Tony says. “The military keeps these under lock and other lock. I don't even have proprietary rights on military tech. How do you propose we get our hands on them?”

Sam grins. “The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall.”

Tony snorts. “So, cake.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

It turns out to pretty much be cake. Between Tony's tech, Natasha and Clint's talent for subterfuge, Sam's familiarity with the facility and Bucky's brute strength, they manage to retrieve the EXO-7 Falcon wings inside of eight minutes, start to finish. Tony hangs back, after he sets a cloning program on a burner cell and hands it to Sam.

Jasper Sitwell, SHIELD agent and former friend of one Agent Phil Coulson, answers his phone thinking he's receiving a call from Alexander Pierce.

“Yes, sir,” he says.

“Agent Sitwell! How was lunch?” Sam asks, voice jovial. “I hear the crab cakes here are delicious.”

“Who is this?”

“The good looking guy in the sunglasses, your ten o'clock,” Sam says. Sitwell looks around but doesn't see him. “ _ Your _ ten o'clock,” Sam repeats. Sitwell turns and spots him.

“There you go,” Sam grins.

“What do you want?”

“You're gonna go around the corner, to your right,” Sam tells him. “There's a grey car, two spaces down. You and I are gonna take a ride.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because that tie looks really expensive, and I'd hate to mess it up.”

Sitwell looks down at his tie, to where Tony has a laser pointed directly at his chest. He swallows roughly at the sight of the little red dot.

Sitwell follows instructions, and Sam takes him a few buildings over before sending him up the elevator to the roof, where Bucky, Clint and Natasha are waiting.

Bucky throws Sitwell across the rooftop. “Tell me about Zola's algorithm,” he says.

“Never heard of it,” Sitwell claims.

“What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?” Clint asks, stepping forward. Natasha just stands to the side, looking bored.

“I was throwing up,” Sitwell sneers. “I get seasick.”

Bucky crowds into Sitwell's space, pushing him toward the edge of the roof.

Sitwell grins. “Is this little display meant to insinuate that you're going to throw me off the roof? Because it's really not your style, Barnes.”

“Maybe not,” Bucky says with a predatory smile. “But it's hers.”

He steps aside, and Natasha launches a hard chest kick, dumping Sitwell directly off the roof.

He screams.

“So, Buck, do I need to talk to you about your intentions with Agent Romanoff?” Clint asks, crossing his arms.

“I'd rather you didn't,” Bucky says, jaw clenching. Natasha rolls her eyes.

Sam flies up from below, carting Sitwell with him, and dumps him unceremoniously onto the roof. Bucky steps forward, and Sitwell scurries back, one hand up in defence.

“Zola's algorithm is a program for choosing Insight's targets,” he spits out.

“What targets?” Clint asks, stepping forward.

“You! Barnes! A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defence, a high school valedictorian in Iowa City. Bruce Banner, Steven Strange, Tony Stark, anyone who's a threat to Hydra! Now, or in the future!”

“How can it know the future?” Bucky asks, taking another menacing step forward.

Sitwell snorts out a disbelieving laugh. “How could it not? The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught Hydra how to read it.” Bucky glances back at Natasha and Clint, who shrug, so he looks back at Sitwell. “Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, emails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Zola's algorithm evaluates people's' past to predict their future.”

“Then what?” Bucky asks him, trying to look menacing. “What does it do then?”

“Oh my God, Pierce is gonna kill me,” Sitwell moans.

“Not if I do it first. What _ then _ ?”

“Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

“Hydra doesn't like leaks,” Sitwell says from the back seat. He's sandwiched in between Clint and Natasha, with Bucky in the passenger seat beside Sam, who's driving. Tony is up high, flying above them as aerial support and hopefully staying off the radar.

“”So why don't you try sticking a cork in it?” Sam says, glaring back at him in the rear view mirror.

“Insight's launching in sixteen hours, we're cutting it a bit close here,” Natasha says, leaning up from behind Bucky.

“We'll use Jasper here to bypass the DNA scans and access the Helicarriers directly,” Bucky says.

“What? Are you crazy? That is a terrible, terrible idea,” Sitwell argues, and Bucky rolls his eyes, about to remind Sitwell he is in the car with a lot of people who could make short work of him, when the back window is smashed in and a metal arm bursts through, snatching Sitwell by the back of the neck and wrenching him out of the vehicle.

Clint reaches for him, but it's too late – Sitwell has gone flying into oncoming traffic, directly into the path of a Super B.

Natasha jumps over the front seat and right into Bucky's lap as a bullet comes from the roof. He's using his body to shield her even as Clint presses himself against the door, trying to take up as little space as possible. Two more bullets breach the interior of the car before Tony swoops down in the armour, and even as he's shouldering the assailant off the roof, Bucky reaches for the emergency brake and pulls it. The figure somersaults off the car and lands in front of them, metal hand digging into the asphalt to slow his slide.

Bucky looks up in horrified recognition.

“The Winter Soldier?” Tony asks, voice coming out distorted from the speakers on his armour.

The Soldier stands up, dirty, blond hair buzzed short, face obscured by a half-mask – Bucky thinks it reminds him of a muzzle, or the gas masks he remembers from the war – and dark goggles. His arm glints in the sunlight.

Tony stands on the roof of the car, while the occupants stare. Sam glances over at Bucky, as though looking for direction, when suddenly their car is rear-ended by an armoured Hummer. Tony is launched off the roof, though his repulsors kick in and he ends up going straight up, but Clint's head hits the back of Sam's seat and Natasha's gun lands on the floor at Bucky's feet. Sam stomps on the brakes, but the sedan is no match for the Hummer behind them.

It pushes them straight for the soldier, until Tony manages to get his bearings and aim down, grabbing the back of the Hummer with a gauntlet and pulling back on it. As he's distracted, the Soldier cartwheels onto the roof of the car again, and punches through the windshield to snatch the steering wheel right out of Sam's hands.

He tosses it aside, and Sam swears while punching the brakes, trying to bring the car to a stop. Natasha reaches around blindly on the floor for her sidearm, and Clint is already unfolding his bow. The soldier jumps off the car and onto the Hummer, climbing over it to the rear end, where he swings out at Tony.

His metal arm connects, and Tony flips end over end, landing hard on the pavement.

The Hummer speeds up again, with the soldier holding onto the top, shooting forward and clipping the back of Sam's car. The sedan careens into the cement barrier, bounces off, and starts to flip.

Bucky grabs Sam and Natasha, jetting the three of them away from the car on the door and the shield, and Tony launches to the other side, grabbing Clint and yanking him to safety.

Sam rolls off the door, and Bucky holds Natasha tighter until it stops moving.

Bucky stands, and glances up just in time to see the soldier point a grenade launcher at them. He shoves Natasha out of the way and holds up the shield, but the blowback from the impact sends him off the bridge and in through the window of a public bus on the underpass below.

Dazed, he can't move for long moments – enough time for the soldier to go after Natasha.

Tony is there, trying to pull Bucky from the bus, trying to bring him back to full awareness.

Bucky can hear Natasha fighting, not far from them, as Tony tries to get him up on his feet.

“Go help Nat,” Bucky wheezes out. “I'll be fine.”

Tony nods, and heads out toward the sounds of fighting.

Bucky hears another explosion, gunshots everywhere. Hydra agents were converging on Sam and Clint when he went off the bridge, and Nat's up against the assassin, and he _ has to get up _ .

He stands, still in the bus, and suddenly bullets are ricocheting off the exposed bottom of it. He knows there's a minigun out there, and he runs through the bus, trying to avoid getting shot as chips of bus flooring burst in at him.

Bucky explodes out the emergency door in the back, rolls to his feet and grabs his shield off the ground, holding it up in front of him to protect himself from the hail of ammunition.

He starts walking forward, using the shield to keep the bullets at bay, heading for the Hydra agent with the minigun – definitely the most pressing situation at the moment.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees an arrow embed itself into another agent's neck, the sound more of a squish than a thud. The agent goes down, and Bucky keeps walking, trusting Clint to cover his back.

Bucky makes his way to the minigun, flipping over the Hydra agent and sending bullets spraying in a wide arc overhead.

He hears a cry from above, and even as he slams the agent down, knocking him out, he glances up to see Clint falling sideways, arrow loosing at the same time. He's been hit – in the knee, it looks like – but he still manages to take out the last of the agents surrounding Bucky.

“Hawkeye!” he calls, moving to leap up to the bridge.

“I got him, Cap!” bellows Sam from up there, and Bucky sees Sam return fire, taking down the agent who'd hit Clint. “Go get the soldier!”

Bucky whirls around, spotting the soldier managing to dodge multiple repulsor blasts from Tony. He glances around for Natasha, but before he manages to spot her, the soldier pulls some kind of wide disc from a pocket and throws it at Tony.

Tony, accustomed to his armour protecting him from all manner of artillery, doesn't attempt to dodge, and the disc hits him low on the hip. Bucky watches in horror as Tony's suit immediately powers down, and the device somehow manages to engage the manual release of most of the catches, parts of the armour falling to Tony's feet in a heap.

Tony doesn't even have time to step away before the soldier is on him, flesh hand gripping Tony around the throat and metal hand rearing back for a hard left cross.

Bucky swings around in a half circle to add more power, and lets loose his shield, aimed straight for the soldier. He drops Tony, who drops to the ground, gasping for air. The shield hits the soldier in the chest and he falls back, and Bucky runs forward, catching the shield as it bounces back toward him.

“You good?” he asks Tony as he gets close. Tony still can't quite catch his breath to answer, but he raises his hand in the air with a quick 'thumbs up'.

Bucky keeps moving toward the soldier, who is getting back to his feet.

“Go find Tasha,” he tells Tony, bringing the shield down hard. The soldier raises his left arm and manages to block the blow, the clang reverberating through the street. The soldier pushes up, and Bucky feels himself being thrown off balance, so he moves back, and the soldier is instantly on him, fist coming down on the shield Bucky automatically raises.

Bucky pulls back again, and then he hears bullets, the soldier whipping out a small semi-automatic. Bucky dodges and swerves, trying to find a way to get close enough to disarm him.

He sees a small opening and moves in, using the shield to knock the gun out of the soldier's hand and following it up with a hard right hook. The soldier bounces right back up, metal hand grabbing the shield and immobilizing it, then punching out with his flesh hand. Bucky dodges, but it still almost makes contact, and then the soldier gets him in the chest with a high kick, and he flies back. He turns it into a roll and lands in a crouch. He doesn't have time to get his bearings back, the soldier is already coming at him, and then it's a flurry of kicks and punches for both of them. Some blows land, some dodges are successful, and then suddenly Bucky is flipping back, landing on a knee, his shield out of his grasp. He looks up, and the soldier is holding it in front of himself.

“That's mine,” Bucky growls, surging forward. He's enraged – that shield is the only thing he has left of Steve Rogers, and no one touches it but Bucky. The soldier throws it at him and he dodges, and it embeds itself into the back of a van. Bucky's eyes widen – if that had been his neck – but he keeps moving forward. The soldier pulls out a knife, giving it a showy twirl just as Bucky reaches him, and they're back at it again – jabs and crosses and rearing back to avoid a hit, taking turns trying and failing to gain the upper hand.

The soldier's skill with the knife has Bucky slowly backing up, losing ground, and he desperately knows he has to make a move or he's going to get cut. He whirls, fluid and graceful and quick, hitting out with a forearm and then following it immediately with a roundhouse kick that sends the soldier flying back into the same van where Bucky's shield is stuck. Bucky rushes forward, shoving a hard knee into the soldier's chest, satisfied by the grunt that escapes him.

The soldier kicks out, punches, and somehow manages to get his metal hand around Bucky's throat. Bucky grunts, feeling his vision starting to blacken almost instantly, gears and servos whirring as the hand clenches around his neck. Then the soldier pulls him in close, eyes intense. Bucky stares into them, hysterically wondering where he's seen that colour blue before, like he's experiencing some sort of deja vu, before he's suddenly shoved and thrown back, flipping over the van and landing hard on his back. He barely has enough time to roll away as the soldier drives his metal fist into the pavement where his head was only a moment before, asphalt cracking in a spiderweb pattern. Bucky leaps up, and they're trading lightning-fast blows again, until Bucky can get close enough to the shield to grab it – just in time, as the soldier pulls another knife from somewhere and then they're at each other once more like rabid dogs.

Finally, Bucky manages to get a good, solid grip on the soldier's face, yanking him over and down, flipping him onto his back. As the soldier flies behind him, Bucky whirls and sees the soldier's strange half-mask land on the pavement between them.

The soldier stands and turns back around. Bucky can finally see his face.

Suddenly, it's 1943 and Bucky can't breathe.

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ A back alley, and Bucky can hear the sounds of a scuffle. Without a doubt, it'll be Stevie getting his ears boxed again. Bucky goes in, uniform starched and scratchy, and hauls back on the guy beating on his best friend. He shoves him out of the alley. _

_ “Pick on someone your own size,” he says. The guy swings, but he's slow and stupid, so Bucky dodges and gives him a good right hook, following it up with a solid kick in the ass. The guy runs off, so Bucky turns back around to check on Steve, who's managing to pull himself to his feet. He's short, rail-thin, and he's got a cut over his brow. _

_ “Sometimes, I think you like getting punched.” _

_ “I had him on the ropes.” _

_ Bucky picks up a slip of paper that had fallen from Steve's pocket. It's a rejection slip from the recruitment centre. _

_ “How many times is this?” he asks. He opens it and reads it over. “Oh, you're from Paramus now? You know it's illegal to lie on the enlistment form.” Bucky shakes his head. “Seriously, Jersey?” _

_ Steve looks up, and finally notices Bucky's uniform. The look on his face is heartbreak, jealousy, dread. _

_ “You get your orders?” _

_ “The 107th,” Bucky answers, tilting his head. “Sergeant James Barnes, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.” _

_ Steve shakes his head and looks down at his feet. “I should be going.” _

_ Bucky watches him for a moment, then grins, pulling him into a one armed hug. “Come on, man. It's my last night! We gotta get you cleaned up.” _

_ “Why? Where we going?” _

_ “The future,” Bucky says. _

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ “Don't do anything stupid until I get back,” Bucky says, stepping away from Steve. _

_ “How can I?” Steve asks, eyes sparkling. “You're taking all the stupid with you.” _

_ Bucky walks back to him, opening his arms for a hug. “You're a punk,” he says, fond, as he wraps Steve in a tight hug. _

_ “Jerk,” Steve calls him, squeezing back. “Be careful.” _

_ Bucky starts to walk away. _

_ “Don't win the war 'til I get there,” Steve calls after him. _

_ Bucky turns, salutes him, and walks away. _

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ He's hot all over, and he hears running footsteps in the hall. He's repeating his rank and serial number as he was taught, but his voice is scratchy and weak. Suddenly, there's a hulking form over him, saying his name. _

_ “Bucky!” _

_ Bucky feels the straps releasing, and he looks up, delirious. _

_ “It's me,” says the angel over him. “It's Steve.” _

_ Blue eyes register then, and then the face, high cheek bones and it's Steve, Bucky's very best friend from the time they were kids. _

_ “Steve,” he grins, lifting a weak hand. “Steve.” _

_ Steve pulls him up, and holds him steady while he tries to get used to being vertical again. _

_ “I thought you were dead,” Steve says, face anguished. _

_ “I thought you were smaller,” Bucky says, blinking hard as he looks up – up! – at Steve. _

_ Gunfire, and Steve is looking around. “Come on,” he says, after a moment, holding Bucky up and guiding him down the hallway. _

_ “What happened to you?” Bucky asks. _

_ “I joined the army,” Steve says. _

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ “How about you?” Steve asks, tone amused. “You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?” _

_ Bucky shakes his head. “Hell no. That little guy from Brooklyn that was too dumb to run away from a fight,” he says, grinning. “I'm following him.” _

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ “We looked for you after. My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery.” _

_ “I know. I'm sorry, it's ... I kinda wanted to be alone.” _

_ “How was it?” _

_ “It was okay. She's next to dad.” _

_ “I was gonna ask...” _

_ “I know what you're gonna say, Buck. It's just that –” _

_ “We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids. It'll be fun. All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash. Come on.” _

_ “Thank you, Buck. But I can get by on my own.” _

_ “The thing is... you don't have to. I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal.” _

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ They're on a train and it's so cold, and Bucky feels his hand slipping, he's falling, surely this is the end, and then Steve is there, his hand gripping Bucky's wrist, pulling him into the train car, into safety, but when Bucky turns, Steve is gone. Bucky rushes to the side of the hole in the train, and looks down, and he sees Steve, falling, eyes full of terror and pain and – oh, God, betrayal – he's not making a sound, but his hands are reaching up and Bucky can't fucking reach him. _

_ He's gone. Steve's gone. Steve's gone and it's Bucky's fault. _

 

\+ + + + +

 

“Steve?” Bucky asks, looking at the soldier, voice small, not sure which way is up.

“Who the hell is Steve?” the soldier asks, and oh, God, it's Steve's voice, too.

Bucky stands there, and he doesn't know what to do.

Then Sam is flying in, kicking the soldier – kicking _ Steve _ –  and Steve rolls away. He looks back at Bucky, face full of confusion, of anger. He raises his gun, takes a shot, and Bucky ducks, he has to, and when he turns back Steve is gone.

He hears nothing but the rush in his ears, feels nothing but bile in his throat.

Rumlow and the rest of the Strike team are suddenly there, surrounding them. Bucky thinks maybe it hadn't been so sudden, but time's not moving like normal for him right now. He glances around, and Tony and Natasha are to his left, kneeling on the ground, guns pressed against their heads. Sam goes down to his knees beside him, and Bucky glances up at the bridge, seeing Clint in the same predicament.

He feels like he's moving underwater. They're shouting at him, Rumlow is next to him, gun raised.

He drops to his knees, trying to see through the fog.

Bucky hears a news chopper overhead, and Rumlow mutters something to Rollins behind him. “Put the gun down,” he says. “Not here. Not here.”

Bucky feels his hands being cuffed behind his back, but all he can see is Steve.


	3. Iron Man: Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart

In the back of the truck – Tony mostly wants to call it a paddy wagon, but that seems a little bit on the nose – Bucky still isn't really saying anything. He's just staring at the steel restraints around his wrists, looking like he's just seen a ghost.

Clint is leaning against him, blood flowing sluggishly from the wound in his thigh. It's a through-and-through, so if they can get it stitched he'll be fine, but it kept him from moving during the fight, and he'd been the first captured.

Sam is on Tony's left, and Natasha is across the truck beside Bucky, glancing down at her bleeding shoulder from time to time. There are two guards in the truck with them.

Tony thinks that might be a bit over-confident, but at the same time, they _ are _ all trussed up in the truck, so who's he to talk?

Once he'd caught his breath after the Winter Soldier's little erotic asphyxiation demonstration, he'd gone after Natasha. She'd been leaning against the tire of a car, trying to hold pressure to the bullet wound in her shoulder. When she spoke, her voice had been hoarse with the betrayal at having been shot – bested, really – by the new generation of Hydra assassin.

Not that Tony blames her. He, himself, had gone down with barely a fight when that EMP stinger had hit him. The suit had basically fallen apart, and then he'd learned by intimate experience what it was like to be hugged and squeezed and called George.

It's embarrassing. The first thing he's going to do when they get out of this particular mess (either they'll beat their way out, or he'll buy their way out, whatever) is figure out how to make the suit EMP proof. He's shocked and appalled he hadn't thought of it before, really.

“He looked right at me,” Bucky says, voice toneless. “He didn't even know me.”

“Who is he?” Clint asks.

“Steve Rogers,” Bucky says, eyes squeezing shut.

“Wait,” Tony says, raising a hand. The other one, cuffed to it, goes along with the movement. “The monster assassin who just about took us all down in a humiliatingly short amount of time is actually Steve Rogers? Steve Rogers, as in the real Captain America?”

“The _ first _ Captain America,” Bucky says, sounding a little offended. But at least now there's a tone, which Tony's counting as a win.

“Captain _ Steve Rogers _ is the Winter Soldier?” Clint asks, voice crawling with doubt.

“How is that even possible?” Sam asks. “It was like 70 years ago.”

“I don't know,” Bucky says. “I don't know what they did to him, or how he's alive. But it's definitely Steve.”

“That's a long time to survive,” Natasha says, voice sluggish with pain and blood loss.

“I'm still around, aren't I?” Bucky replies. No one says anything for a beat. “They must have done something to make him – Steve was... he was so good. What did they do to him?”

“None of that's your fault, James,” Natasha says.

“I was supposed to protect him,” Bucky says, almost to himself. He looks away from them all. “I was always supposed to protect him.”

Sam glances down at Natasha's shoulder, eyes hardening at the way the blood pulses out.

“We need to get a doctor here,” he says to the guard. “We don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck.”

The guard raises a prod-style baton, and it flashes with electricity. Sam rears back, but the guard flips it and stabs his partner in the chest with it. The second guard slumps down, unconscious.

They all stare at the first guard.

His hands reach up and pull off the tight, black helmet. Out pops – not a _ him _ at all – Maria Hill.

She brushes her messy hair back. “That thing was squeezing my brain,” she sighs.

Tony grins at her. “Agent Hill! Good to see you!”

She just rolls her eyes. She glances at Sam. “Who's this guy?”

“Sam Wilson,” he says, flashing her a flirtatious grin. “And who might you be?”

Maria glances between them all for a moment. “God, you guys can't go a couple of days without getting into trouble, can you?”

“I'll have you know I spent at least nine non-consecutive days out of trouble last month,” Tony says, leaning back.

Maria pulls out a laser cutter, and opens up a wide hole in the floor.

“Time to go!” she says, almost cheerful.

Tony just grins as she unshackles him.

 

\+ + + + +

 

They switch to a van, and Maria drives them to a defunct dam just outside the city. Sam is on one side of Clint, while Tony takes the other, so he doesn't have to put any weight on his leg as they support him. Natasha walks with her hand covering her shoulder, but she doesn't let Bucky help her.

“GSWs, they've each lost at least a pint,” Maria calls down the hall as they enter, and a man in a suit comes from the other end toward them.

“Maybe two,” Sam adds.

“Let me take them,” the stranger says, and Natasha looks around wildly, like she's ready to fight her way out.

“They'll wanna see him first,” Maria says, and Tony stares at her. They keep walking down the hall, until they get to a grungy room with a white hospital bed at the end of it.

In it, Nick Fury rolls his head up to face them.

“About damned time,” he says.

“Well, holy shit,” Tony breathes.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Of course Fury isn't dead. He runs down the list of his injuries while the doctor holds pressure to Natasha's shoulder, and another agent holds pressure on Clint's leg.

“Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, one hell of a headache,” Fury says.

“Don't forget your collapsed lung,” the doctor pipes up from the corner.

“Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good.”

“Just a flesh wound,” Tony murmurs under his breath. Clint snickers beside him.

“They cut you _ open _ ,” Natasha argues. “Your _ heart _ stopped.”

“Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute,” Fury explains. “Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it.”

“And you couldn't tell us? Jesus, Nick, we thought you were dead,” Bucky growls, anger bringing some life back into his eyes.

“Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful,” Maria says.

“Can't kill you if you're already dead,” Fury says. “Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust.”

“You could have trusted us,” Tony says, crossing his arms. “Now I'm the one who has to call Bruce and tell him that when I called him and told him you'd _ died _ , I made a mistake.”

“So, Pierce is Hydra,” Clint says, looking up at Fury. Tony keeps his eye on Fury, who sighs.

 

\+ + + + +

 

“Didn't Pierce turn down a Nobel Peace Prize?” Tony asks, feeling like his head is too heavy for his neck. “He was at my high school graduation. Dad was busy, but Pierce was there.”

Tony mostly just wants to rest his forehead on the table top – so he does.

“He said peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility,” Fury agrees. “See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues.”

“You and me both,” Tony says, sitting back up.

“We have to stop the launch,” Natasha says.

“I don't think the Council's accepting our calls anymore,” Tony says, leaning forward onto the table. “So, what, we hack it?”

“We can't hack it remotely,” Maria says. She turns to Tony. “A little feature we built in after you got into all of SHIELD's files when we first brought you onto a helicarrier.”

He shrugs at her.

Fury opens a case that contains three chips, about the size of a credit card each.

“What's that?” Sam asks, leaning forward.

“Once those carriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites, becoming fully weaponized,” Maria explains.

“So we need to replace their targeting blades with our own?” Tony says.

“One or two won't cut it,” Maria says to the rest of the group with a nod. “We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational a whole lot of people are gonna die.”

“We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is Hydra. We need to get past them, insert the server blades, and maybe – just maybe – we can salvage what's left,” Nick says.

“We're not salvaging anything,” Bucky says, a hand up. “We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick. We're taking down SHIELD.”

“I second,” Tony says, raising his hand.

“SHIELD had nothing to do with it,” Nick argues.

“You gave me this mission with that flash drive,” Bucky says. “SHIELD's been compromised, and it can't be put back together.”

“Hydra was right under your nose and nobody noticed,” Tony adds.

“Why do you think we're meeting here?” Fury says, turning to Tony. “I noticed.”

“And how many people has Hydra hurt up to now?” Bucky asks.

Fury sighs. “I didn't know about Rogers.”

“Would you have told me anyway? Or would you have kept that a secret, too?”

“I would have told you.”

“It all goes,” Bucky says, jaw clenching. “We're razing it to the ground.”

Maria sighs. “He's right.”

Fury looks at them all in turn.

“Don't look at me,” Sam says, pointing a finger toward Bucky. “I do what he does, just slower.”

Tony snorts. “Dad started SHIELD, the least I can do is tear it down for him.”

Natasha and Clint share a look, then Natasha shrugs. Neither of them says anything.

“Well. Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain,” Fury says with a nod.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Bucky stands on the bridge above the dam. Tony strolls up next to him, trying to be as obtrusive as possible.

“He's gonna be there,” Tony says. “You know that, don't you?”

“I know,” Bucky says.

“He doesn't know you.”

“We have to take him alive.” Bucky turns to face him head-on.

Tony inclines his head to the right. “He might not agree to that.”

“I don't fucking care,” Bucky snarls. “We're taking him alive.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, and Bucky sighs, tension bleeding out.

“Sorry,” he says. “How's your throat?”

Tony automatically puts a hand up to the abused flesh, wondering if the bruise is showing yet. “Nothing a good scotch on the rocks can't cure,” he shrugs.

“You don't have time to modify the suit,” Bucky says, looking distressed. “He can get to you again.”

“I'll try to stay out of his way,” Tony says. “There _ are _ 3 helicarriers to choose from.”

“You get one, Sam will get one, and I'll get the third,” Bucky says with a nod. “And then I make Steve remember me.”

“It might not be that easy.”

Bucky looks sad for a minute. “I let him down, Tony. He was my friend, and I let them – I let them have him. I let them hurt him.”

“You couldn't have known.”

“It doesn't matter,” Bucky says. He shakes his head sadly and walks away, leaving Tony on the bridge alone.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Tony puts on the armour, and – after giving them a bit of a head start – follows Bucky, Sam and Maria to the Triskelion. Clint is forced to stay at the dam due to his leg, though he's not particularly happy about it. Bucky and Fury both agree that he should sit this one out, of course, so he does – after a healthy shouting match.

They sneak into the launch control room, Maria and Sam with guns raised, Tony with his repulsors ready.

Bucky saunters into the room. “We need the room, boys,” he says.

“Attention all SHIELD agents,” Bucky says into the intercom microphone. Maria taps a few keys, and Tony knows the sound is echoing throughout the entire building. “This is James Barnes. You all know who I am. You've heard a lot about me this week. You've been ordered to hunt me down and bring me in. But you need to know the truth.

“SHIELD is not what we thought it was. Hydra has infiltrated you and taken over. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The Strike and Insight crew are Hydra, too. The building is full of Hydra agents. I don't know who they are, but they could be standing right next to you. If those helicarriers make it into the air, Hydra will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way at the touch of a button – unless we stop them. The price of freedom is high, and it always has been. I'm asking a lot, I know. But I'm here and willing to pay that price. I'm willing to bet that anyone in this building loyal to SHIELD is, too.”

Sam looks at him with a grin. “Did you write that down first? Or was it off the top of your head?”

“They're initiating the launch,” Maria says from the terminal after a moment. “Get going.”

Sam, Bucky and Tony head for the helicarriers.

“JARVIS? What do we got?” Tony asks.

“The helicarriers are almost airborne,” JARVIS says in his ear. “It will be only moments before they are high enough to begin triangulating.”

“We haven't got a lot of time,” he says to Bucky and Sam. “I'm going down.”

Tony flies down to the deck of the first helicarrier, where there are a surprising amount of Hydra agents shooting at him.

“How do we know the good guys from the bad guys?” Sam asks in his earbud.

“The bad guys are gonna be the ones trying to kill you,” Bucky replies. They follow him down to the deck – Sam flying and Bucky just doing that show-off Captain America jump-and-roll thing he does.

Tony stays in the air, shooting repulsor blasts at Hydra agents, but the ship is overrun. He knows Bucky and Sam will have their hands full as well.

Tony spots Sam ascending to the second helicarrier, and then cringes as the guns atop it start blasting ordnance at him.

“Hey, Cap,” Sam says into his comm. “Found those bad guys you were talking about.”

“You okay?” Bucky asks.

“He's fine,” Tony says, taking out a couple more Hydra agents. “He's just looking for attention.”

“Falcon,” Maria says in their ears. “Status?”

“Engaging,” Sam says. Tony watches him take a few more evasive manoeuvres, dive-bombing straight for the launch deck of the helicarrier. He takes out a few goons when he lands.

“Alright, guys, I'm in,” he says into his comm.

Tony shoots up toward the third helicarrier. He glances back and sees an F22 leave the launch deck and head straight for Sam, guns blazing.

Sam dodges, flying low to the asphalt, as the bullets get closer and closer.

Tony decides his helicarrier can wait, and he turns back, repulsors blasting at the aircraft. Sam dodges under the helicarrier and the plane follows him, so Tony hits it again.

It bursts apart, debris crashing into the river below.

“Thanks, Stark,” Sam says as he somersaults into the belly of the helicarrier.

“Eight minutes, Sir,” JARVIS says in Tony's ear.

“Eight minutes,” Maria echoes into the comms. Tony rolls his eyes – she’s not connected to JARVIS, and if she’s just going to say everything JARVIS says  _ after _ him, Tony’s going to turn the comms off altogether.

Tony flies back to the third helicarrier, repulsors the two guards, and marches up to the guidance station. A slot opens in the side of his suit, and he pulls out his targeting blade.

Tony punches a few keys to bring the motherboard down, then inserts it into the nav system. The board slides back up, and he shoots away. “Alpha lock,” he says into the comms.

“Falcon?” Maria says. “Where are you now?”

“Had to take a detour, but I'm in now,” Sam replies. “Bravo lock.”

JARVIS displays Maria's screen onto Tony's HUD, and he sees that all that's left is Bucky's helicarrier. The other two are neutralized, but it has to be all three.

“Cap, you in?”

Even as he says it, he sees explosions down below. SHIELD's F22s and Raptors are exploding on the base below.

Tony rockets down, even as another explosion goes off. He scans the area and – there he is. The Winter Soldier. With a big-ass gun.

“I got eyes on Rogers,” Tony says into his comm.

“Is he – ” Bucky starts

“He's blowing SHIELD agents to hell. Cap, I gotta neutralize him.”

“Alive, Stark.”

“I heard you the first eighty-three times,” Tony says, gritting his teeth as he dives.

He lands hard on the pavement, meeting Rogers' gaze.

“You know, I owe you a little something for the last time we met.”

“I don't know you,” says Rogers. Without waiting for a response, he cocks and fires the weapon in his hand. Tony shoots up into the air, just high enough to avoid being hit.

“I'm hurt, Captain Rogers, I really am,” he says. “I mean, I thought we had something.”

“I have a mission,” Rogers says. Tony shrugs. He bursts forward, shoulder hitting with a heavy impact into Rogers' chest, knocking him back a few dozen feet. Rogers flips and arches, coming back up to his feet in an instant, barely winded.

Tony goes at him again, but this time that metal arm jerks up and knocks him out of the way.

They fight hand-to-hand for a few moments, and Tony is having trouble keeping up with his speed. Then Tony sees Rogers reach into his pocket. He recognizes the EMP device before it even comes all the way out, and he fires a quick repulsor blast at it. It chars and smokes, useless.

“Fool me once,” Tony says with a grin, and then there is only pain, because Rogers, the bastard, had pulled another EMP device out of a different pocket with his other hand and slapped it onto the side of Tony's shoulder.

The suit dies instantly and the locks disengage.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Tony says, scrambling back. “I could use a hand down here,” he says into his comms, even as he pulls out a stun baton from his belt and jabs at Rogers with it. It doesn't seem to do much damage.

“Dammit, Tony, you weren't supposed to engage,” Bucky growls into his comms.

“Scold later,” Tony says.

“I got him,” Sam says breathlessly, swooping in and hitting Rogers with a solid two-footed kick.

Rogers keeps rolling until he lands beside the last remaining F22. He moves too fast for Sam or Tony to do anything, shooting the pilot in the head and taking off.

“You okay?” Sam asks Tony, stopping to check him over.

“I'm fine, I'm fine, just go,” Tony snaps out, waving Sam toward the F22 streaking toward the third – Bucky's – helicarrier.

Tony can see Fury's chopper landing on the roof of the Triskelion. He assumes that means Natasha's half of the plan is going well, and that she's made it inside to release the SHIELD & Hydra files to the public. Fury was only going to go in once she'd started the process.

“Charlie carrier is 45 degrees off the port bow of Bravo,” Maria says in Tony's ear.

He glances up, and there are more Hydra agents coming toward him.

Bucky didn't say _ shit _ about taking _ them _ alive. Tony lets loose a feral grin and, dodging behind a pile of rubble, takes the fast-action Glock out of its holster on his hip. With a whoop, he starts shooting.

He misses with the first three shots, but four and five each take out an agent, so he calls it a win. Well, a draw. Either way, he still has the stun baton and manages to take out the other three agents without taking too much damage himself.

Later, he'll hear about the battle on the carrier. How Rogers managed to get on board and throw Bucky off the side. How he held on for dear life while Sam battled it out with the soldier and was woefully outmatched. How Rogers tore one of the Falcon wings off the EXO-7 pack and threw Sam off the carrier, and he had to pull his chute – that part, Tony could actually see.

He'll hear how Bucky climbed up, and he and Rogers fought. How Bucky took three bullets, ended up with a broken orbital bone and a concussion. How Bucky held Rogers down, an arm across his throat, until he finally went unconscious, and Bucky managed to get the targeting blade in, finally, but that Rogers still hadn't stopped, had gotten up and gone after him again and was hitting him with that damned vicious metal arm.

How they fought hard and fast, while Fury and Natasha finished releasing the files to the public, how they took Pierce out and saved Sam from the collapsing building.

How Bucky told Maria to destroy the carriers with him still inside. How Rogers had been trapped, and Bucky had gone down to help him. Bucky will explain that he'd freed Rogers, and that Rogers had kept denying any memory of him, but his face – Bucky knew that face.

“Your name is Steven Grant Rogers,” Bucky told him. “I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend.”

And Rogers had charged him, hitting him over and over again.

“You're my mission!” Rogers had yelled.

“Then finish it,” Bucky told him. “'Cause I'm with you 'til the end of the line.”

And Rogers had stared at him, and Bucky swore up and down that there was a flicker there. Recognition, and pain, and confusion. But it was there.

“And then we fell,” Bucky says, shifting up a little in his hospital bed.

“And you think he's worth saving?” Clint asks. “After all that?”

“I know he is. Because somebody pulled me out of that river. Guys, I was out cold. I didn't swim to shore. He went in after me, and he pulled me out. He saved me.”

“That doesn't mean he remembers you,” Tony says with a shrug.

“He did,” Bucky insists.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Natasha calls in some favours and comes up with a file on the Winter Soldier. It's not much to go on, but it's a start. Bucky hands it right over to Tony.

“Anything you can do with this?” he asks, leaning against Tony’s slick metal work bench.

Tony grins and snatches the file from him. “JARVIS,” he says into the air. “Let's be hide-and-seek champions.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

Tony inputs the photos they have of Rogers into JARVIS' system. They don't have a lot of photos, but they do have his mug shots from the Project Rebirth files, as well as a few grainy traffic camera photos from the attack on the bridge.

Step two: Tony sets JARVIS loose on the world's surveillance footage.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Bucky asks him, looking at the holoscreen dubiously. The screen flashes various fragments of surveillance video from around the world, and a green wireframe map of the globe spins off to their right, various pings flashing on and off.

“Eventually, sure,” Tony shrugs. “It's not an exact science, but it is solid math.”

“Take me through it again,” Bucky says, crossing his arms.

Tony rolls his eyes. “What JARVIS is doing is similar to watch-list screening recognition. There are 250 million video surveillance cameras in the world. 20 percent of those are on a network, meaning JARVIS can access 50 million of them. Since we have more than one photo of Rogers, there's a 90 per cent chance that if he walks in front of one of those 50 million cameras, JARVIS will detect it. Once we get a bead, you can do a second identification, and we'll know where to start.”

“Why do we need the second ID?” Sam asks. “Shouldn't your fancy computer here get it in one?”

Tony glares. “The photos JARVIS is working with are either old or grainy. The best photo we have is of Rogers before Project Rebirth, and his face is different.” Tony looks down at the photo, and tries not to focus on the difference between Rogers' eyes then and his eyes now – hollow and cold instead of kind and stubborn. “The eyes are the same shape,” he says instead. “But the jaw now is harder, stronger. His brow is wider now, too.”

“So,” Bucky says with a sigh. “Not an exact science.”

“Now you're catching on.”

“When's Bruce coming home?” Clint asks from the doorway. He's still limping, but he's refused to use the crutches.

“He said he'd be here by morning,” Tony says.

“Did you tell him about Fury?”

Tony smirks. “I thought about just surprising him, having a fake funeral and getting Nick to pop out of the casket, but I thought maybe Big Green wouldn't appreciate it as much as I would.”

“You're a menace,” Natasha says with a grin, coming in after Clint. She moves to stand beside Bucky. Tony notices that she's standing closer to him than he's ever seen her purposely stand next to anyone when she wasn't on an op – Clint included.

He doesn't say anything, though. He likes his balls where they are.

“So how long is this going to take?” Sam asks.

Tony snorts. “No way to tell. He could walk by one of those cameras 3 years from now, or 3 seconds.”

Everyone looks at the screens expectantly. Nothing happens, of course – they just keep cycling through, little grids outlining facial features as the clips fly by.

“When JARVIS knows, we'll know,” Tony says, sitting back. “So for now, we wait.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

It takes three weeks for Rogers to step in front of one of the world's 50 million networked cameras. It happens at three in the morning, but Tony's not sleeping anyway. He's in the workshop putting the finishing touches on Sam's new EXO-8 flight pack.

“Excuse me, sir, but perhaps we should wake Captain Barnes?” JARVIS says gently. “I have located an individual who shares a 97 per cent facial recognition match with Captain Steven Grant Rogers.”

“Pull it up,” Tony says, sitting back and staring at the holo display. A video loop pops up from the grid, showing a man in a ball cap at a fruit stand. Tony eyes him for a moment. He's wearing a leather glove on his left hand, and a long sleeved sweatshirt, even though the people around him seem to be wearing T-shirts. It's hard to get a good look at his face, but he'd bet dollars to doughnuts that it's Rogers.

“Wake up Bucky,” he tells JARVIS. “Where is this?”

“The surveillance camera that caught this particular video is located in Chisinau, Moldova,” JARVIS tells him. The video was taken at 10:57 am local time.”

In the video, the man-who-might-be-Rogers is talking to a vendor at a street market.

“What's he buying?” Tony asks.

“He appears to be purchasing apples.”

Tony rolls his eyes.

“Where is he?” Bucky asks, voice hoarse with sleep as he rushes into the workshop. He's still pulling a T-shirt over his head.

“Moldova,” Tony says. He jerks his chin at the screen. “This a positive ID?”

Bucky stares at the image for a moment. “That's Steve. How fast can we get to him?”

“Hold your horses, Buckaroo,” Tony admonishes, letting out a puff of air. “JARVIS, can you track through the cameras in the area and find a point of origin?”

“There are not many networked surveillance devices in Chisinau,” JARVIS says regretfully. “The nearest I can pinpoint is that he has travelled from the west side of the city.”

Tony looks up at Bucky. “Okay, so we know he's there. We know he's buying apples.”

“He's got a whole sack of stuff,” Bucky says with a nod toward the video loop. “Means he's probably holed up somewhere.”

“JARVIS, what about his arm?” Tony asks, a sudden thought. “Is it putting off any trace radiation? Some kind of energy signature?”

“Nothing strong enough to detect,” JARVIS says.

Tony snaps his fingers a few times, staring at the screen.

He sighs.

“Okay, Cap. In the morning we'll prep a quinjet and we'll go take a look.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Bucky says, smile genuine.

“He still may not remember you,” Tony says, warning him. “He could rabbit at the sight of us, or he could come at us again.”

“Sure, but you fixed your suit, didn't you?” Bucky asks with a bit of a grin.

“Of course I fixed my suit, I fixed my suit before I started Sam's new wings because I am not an idiot,” Tony grins back.

“Then let's go get my friend.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

Bucky spends the rest of the night preparing the quinjet and watching the security feeds for more glimpses of Rogers. Tony actually takes the time to go upstairs to his penthouse suite and get a couple hours of sleep. In the morning – he convinces Bucky they have to wait for a decent time – he has JARVIS send out a message to the other floors so each member of the team is aware of the new development. At least, each member of the team who is currently in the tower – Natasha and Clint have healed well enough to come along, and Bruce is back as well. Thor still hasn't been back planet-side, but truthfully no one is expecting him.

Tony's the last one to the quinjet launch bay, bleary-eyed and carrying a jumbo-sized travel mug of coffee.

Bucky glares at him. “You're late.”

Tony just walks past him onto the quinjet. “Really? Because I'm on the jet before you,” he calls back behind him, snickering. He goes straight to the cockpit and has JARVIS input the coordinates.

“So what's the plan?” Clint asks. “We don't actually know where in the city he is, do we?”

Tony shakes his head, leaning back in his seat as Bucky enters the jet, closes the air lock and sits in his seat beside Natasha. “The plan is to get to Chisinau and get eyes on the market we saw him at in the footage.”

“Then what?” Bruce asks.

“Then you're going to follow him,” Tony says with a grin.

“Why Bruce?” Sam asks, brow furrowed.

“Because he hasn't seen Bruce. He's seen all of us, he'll make us in an instant,” Bucky says.

Bruce ducks his head. “He could still spot me. I've never been particularly good at spy craft.”

“Don't worry about it, Brucie Bear. Just don't go green, and stay back a ways,” Tony grins, pushing the throttle forward to take the jet into the air. He pilots it as far as the city limits and then sets the controls to auto-pilot.

He takes another swig of his coffee.

“We'll all be watching, too,” Bucky says. “But we gotta stay out of sight.”

“And once we find where he's staying?”

“Then I go talk to him,” Bucky says.

“Whoa, you what?” Tony says, sitting up straight. “I thought the plan was that we go in and tranq him, tie him up, and get him into a super-strength-proof holding cell until we were sure the assassin wasn't going to, just spitballing here, assassinate us all?”

“I'll find that out when I go to talk to him,” Bucky says stubbornly.

“And if he assassinates you?” Natasha asks, arching a perfect eyebrow.

“He won't. He'll know me.”

Clint snorts. “Come on, Buck, you're really going to just knock on his door and not expect him to open it with a Ruger?”

“I need him to trust me. Coming at him with a tranq gun – assuming we have a strong enough tranquilizer – and a holding cell isn't gonna do that.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “You're gonna be stubborn here, aren't you?”

“Of course I am,” Bucky grins at him.

Natasha looks back and forth between them. “Fine. You wanna go in and have Sunday tea with him?” she asks. “You do that.”

Bucky gives her a somewhat smug nod.

“But Tony goes with you,” she finishes.

Bucky blinks. Tony blinks.

Natasha stares them down.

“I can bring the suitcase suit in with me,” Tony shrugs. “I've already made the upgrades so if Tin Cup tries to hit me with one of those EMP bombs it'll bounce back with an electric charge.”

“You can do that?” Clint asks, giving Tony the side-eye.

Tony scoffs. “I can do anything.”

“Except be humble,” Bruce interjects.

“You know, you are all living very comfortably on the grace of my generosity,” Tony reminds them.

“And we are very grateful,” Natasha says with no inflection in her voice. “Now, back to the plan. James and Tony will go and try to convince Rogers to come in. Bruce and I will hang back out of sight as back-up in case Rogers is difficult to convince. Sam will stay with the jet, in case we need quick extraction.”

“Where's Clint going to be in all this?” Tony asks.

Clint shrugs and leans back in his chair. “Watching from a distance. Just in case you all fail miserably and I have to save your sorry asses.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

Tony's vantage point of the market is not much of a vantage point. As a matter of fact, he could look all around him and never catch sight of the market at all. What he does have is a StarkPad showing lovely security footage, courtesy of JARVIS, in his hand as he sits on a park bench several blocks south, sipping a cup of coffee.

Tony's not really watching it – JARVIS will notify him via his earpiece when the facial recognition locates Rogers. If it does – they have no guarantee that Rogers will be at the market today.

He flips the screen on his pad to some engineering blueprints. Bucky had insisted they all be vigilant, but JARVIS can do that on Tony's behalf. Tony can just get some work done.

It takes him a moment to realize someone is beside him on the bench. He rolls his eyes, sure it's Natasha come to scold him for letting his guard down. He may not be a spy or enhanced, but he's still pretty aware, and there really isn't anyone else who can sneak up on him so effectively.

So imagine his shock when he looks over and sees not Natasha Romanoff at his side, but Steve Rogers himself. He's wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt to hide his arm.

[If you have downloaded this work to a mobile app, you can click this link to see the art by Fan.](http://68.media.tumblr.com/7471c98aec0256bfe8fd651ee5691d13/tumblr_ogtf92FBTb1r6wsaho2_500.png)

Tony's eyes widen in what he's sure is a comically ridiculous way, and he just stares.

“You and your people are hunting me,” Rogers says, voice gravelly.

“I wouldn't categorize it as hunting, exactly,” Tony says, surreptitiously thumbing the emergency switch on his cufflink. It will alert JARVIS that Tony needs him to let the other Avengers know he needs backup.

“Why?”

“Why wouldn't I categorize it as hunting? Or why are we looking for you?”

Rogers just glares at him, not elaborating.

Tony shrugs. “Bucky misses you. You remember Bucky? Dark hair? Kinda muscle-y? Beacon of all that's good and right?”

Rogers narrows his eyes.

“Do you?” Tony asks. “Remember him?”

“We fought on the bridge.”

Tony squints at him. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” Rogers says. His voice takes on an unsure tone, and his brow furrows. “He liked to dance.”

That's the moment Bucky comes up the park path, muscles tense, shield in its black backpack slung over just the one shoulder.

“Hey, Stevie,” he says, gently, once he gets close. Rogers' whole body tenses, like he's getting ready to bolt.

Tony puts out a calming hand to stay Bucky's progress.

“It's okay, Bucky,” he says, keeping his voice gentle. “We're okay here.”

Rogers starts to relax his posture again, though Tony can tell he's still coiled like a spring.

Bucky stands there, obviously trying to project a demeanour of calm, though even Tony can tell he's just as tense as Rogers.

Tony notices Bruce come around a tree, walking straight toward them, and he rolls his eyes. Natasha and Clint are probably somewhere he can't see, though he's sure they can see him. In another minute, Rogers is going to feel boxed in and his instinct is going to be to fight his way out.

“Okay, let's all calm down and use our words,” Tony says, glaring meaningfully in Bruce's direction. Bruce somehow manages to take the hint and keeps walking, going right by the three of them, pretending he's just someone out for a stroll.

Tony's not sure Bruce pulls it off, but he appreciates the effort.

“Do you remember me?” Bucky asks. “Steve?”

“You were my mission.”

Bucky looks a little sad. “Don't you remember me from before? We were friends.”

Rogers stares at him, expression closed off.

“Do you – do you remember when we went to Rockaway Beach? And we had to ride back in the back of that freezer truck because you spent our train money on hot dogs?”

Rogers doesn't say anything.

“I blew three bucks trying to win that stuffed bear for a redhead?” Bucky prompts. He starts to sound like he's talking to himself. “What was her name again?”

“Dolores,” Rogers says, after a moment. His expression doesn't change. “You called her Dot.”

Bucky grins, eyes lighting up. “She's gotta be a hundred years old by now.”

“Why are you hunting me?” Rogers asks again.

“We're not hunting you, pal,” Bucky says, eyes going sad. “I just – I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Rogers meets his eyes, challenging.

“Are you?” Tony asks, suddenly. “Are you okay?”

Rogers doesn't answer.

“You pulled me from the river,” Bucky tries again. “You saved me.”

“Someone's going to come after you,” Tony sighs. “You're a wanted man.”

“Jesus, Tony,” Bucky growls.

“What? He has to know that,” Tony says, then turns back to Rogers. “Look, we get that you were brainwashed, okay? We've seen the files. But the general public? To them, you're just another Hydra assassin. At some point, someone's going to recognize you, and they're going to come after you.”

Rogers tenses again.

“I'm not saying right now,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. “What I _ am _ saying is the best thing for you to do right now is come with us. We can keep you safe, and we can keep the rest of the world safe, too.”

“I don't do that anymore,” Rogers says, jaw tight.

“Sure, sure,” Tony says, waving his coffee around dismissively. “No more murdering. Sure. But if some Hydra straggler finds you?”

“They won't,” he growls.

“We did,” Tony says. “Only took us, what, a month? Less?”

“I let you,” Rogers says.

“So you do remember me,” Bucky says, stepping forward.

Rogers pulls a face at him, the epitome of 'bitch, please', and Tony barks out a laugh.

“Oh, I like you,” Tony grins. He slaps a hand down on Rogers' knee, recklessly, just to see what he'll do.

Rogers reacts instantly, less than a blink going by as he grabs Tony's wrist and pulls it back behind Tony's torso. The coffee drops to the ground, spilling out of its cup in a wide arc, and Rogers holds him there. Bucky has tensed, going into a ready crouch.

But Tony's arm doesn't _ hurt _ . Rogers' instinct was to disable and neutralize, not to injure. Rogers slowly lets him go, and Tony puts both hands up placatingly.

“We're good,” he says, giving Bucky a look. “We're fine.”

He'd gotten an answer to the question at the back of his mind, anyway.

“So. I have this really big tower, where everybody lives in this kind of superhero frat house thing,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back on the bench. “Good security, lots of privacy. You wanna spend your days remembering what it's like to be your own man? We got the space for it.”

Rogers goggles at him.

Tony shrugs.

“Well, I mean, I assume you're squatting in some hovel here?” Tony asks, arching an eyebrow. Rogers doesn't change his expression. “Right, yeah, hovel it is.”

“You can't make me go with you,” Rogers says, voice hard.

“Course not,” Tony says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card with the address for Avengers Tower on it. He – slowly, gingerly – leans forward and tucks it into Rogers' right hand, noticing the skin is warm and dry.

“Take this. You decide you're ready to get back in the world without being at its mercy, you come by,” Tony says, standing up nonchalantly. He grabs Bucky by the elbow and starts walking.

“Tony, wait, where are –”

“C'mon, Cap, time to go,” he says through gritted teeth. He keeps moving forward along the path, back in the direction of the quinjet.

“But what about Steve?”

Tony snorts. “He'll come, Barnes. But right now, if we push any harder he's gonna run.”

“We can't just leave him,” Bucky argues, but he lets Tony drag him up the path.

“We can, and we will. He's a big boy, Cap, but we gotta let him come to us, or it isn't going to work.”

Tony looks back over his shoulder, and Rogers is still sitting on the bench, staring at the card in his hand. Tony lets a small smile spread across his face.

“He'll show,” he says again.

 

\+ + + + +

 

It takes five weeks for Rogers to show up at the tower, and Bucky spends all five of those weeks prowling around the place like a caged wolf.

When he comes, it's the middle of the night. Tony is down in the workshop, fuelled by coffee and nervous energy. Bucky being as on edge as he's been has got _ all _ of them on edge.

It hasn't escaped Tony's notice that Bucky is spending more nights on Natasha's floor than his own these days, but it doesn't seem to be relaxing him during his waking hours at all.

“Pardon me, sir, but you have a visitor,” JARVIS interrupts Tony's thoughts. He blinks, keeps turning the screwdriver he's working with, and doesn't glance up.

“Who's here?”

“Captain Steven Grant Rogers,” JARVIS says, and Tony thinks that if JARVIS were smackable, he'd like to smack the dryness right out of him.

Tony sits up straight, looking around.

“Is he in the tower?”

“Yes, Sir. He's in the elevator requesting entrance to the residential floors.”

Tony thinks for a moment. “Ok, bring him up.”

“Shall I inform Captain Barnes of his arrival?”

“Not yet,” Tony says.

“Sir, I would caution –”

“Yeah, yeah, save it, J. He came here for a reason, let's see what it is.”

“That reason may very well be murder.”

Tony smirks. “Well, sure. And if he tries to kill me you can say you told me so, and use one of the unmanned suits to avenge my death.”

“What a comfort,” JARVIS replies.

The elevator to the workshop – locked down to Tony's explicit permission at all times, of course – opens and  Rogers steps out. He looks around him, surveying the room for threats. Tony watches his guarded expression for a moment.

“Nice to see you,” he says with a nod, not getting up from his stool. “You found the tower okay?”

“Yes,” Rogers says, stepping further into the room. He takes a couple more steps toward Tony, then halts, unsure.

“Would you like to sit down?” Tony gestures toward another stool nearby, still moving carefully. He tries to telegraph every action before he takes it.

Rogers studies him for a moment, then moves toward the stool and perches on the edge of it.

“So, how was Moldova?”

“Warm,” Rogers says stiltedly, and Tony counts it as a win. He slowly reaches for his coffee cup, making sure to be as obviously non-threatening as possible. Tony's a risk-taker, not an idiot.

He takes a sip, purposely loud, and sits back.

“So. How're you feeling? Homicidal at all? In charge of your own mind?”

Rogers stares at him. “You talk a lot.”

Tony laughs, genuine. “It's possible I've been told that before.”

Rogers shifts uncomfortably.

“So,” Tony says. “We set aside a floor for you, if you want to stay a while. I'm sure Bucky would like to see you.”

Rogers nods once.

“I mean, you do sleep, right?”

“Some,” Rogers agrees.

“Great!” Tony says, clapping his hands. He stands up, forgetting to move slowly, and Rogers tenses.

“Sorry, big guy,” Tony tells him, hands up. “Didn't mean to stress you out.”

“I'm not... stressed,” Rogers tells him. His expression, while still neutral, almost looks bemused. Tony wonders if he's projecting.

He leads the way to the elevator. “Let's go see your floor,” he says to Rogers, stepping in. Rogers moves in with him, and JARVIS closes the door behind them, the elevator travelling several floors to the one they'd set aside.

“Most people would hesitate before getting in an elevator with me,” Rogers says after a moment.

“It _ is _ the kind of stunt usually reserved for people with more money than brains,” Tony agrees. “Luckily for us, I have both.”

“It's stupid. I could kill you in an instant.”

Tony shrugs, meeting Rogers' eye. “I'm not a complete idiot,” he says. “JARVIS has a lot of security protocols in place. Not least of which are targeted electrical charges in the elevator.” The doors open, and Tony steps out into the residence. “If you'd made a move, he'd have put you down before you could touch me.”

Rogers eyes him for a moment, then steps out with a satisfied nod. “Good. You shouldn't trust me.”

“Shouldn't I?” Tony asks, then instantly wonders where the question came from. He knows he _ shouldn't _ trust the brainwashed 90-year-old assassin. Obviously. Sinfully long eyelashes or not.

Rogers' eyes aren't as cold as they were when Tony had first met him, actually. Which might have a lot to do with the currently-not-attempting-to-murder him thing.

“No.” Rogers looks down at the floor.

“So, this is your floor,” Tony says cheerfully, after a beat. “Living room, television, full kitchen, bedroom, bath, den. It's pretty simple. We didn't do a lot of decorating.”

Rogers looks around.

“Is there anything you need? Something I can get you?”

Rogers shakes his head. He looks warily around the room.

“Bedroom's through there,” Tony points. “You could get some sleep. See everyone – Bucky – in the morning.”

Rogers nods at him, but doesn't move.

Tony heads back toward the elevator. “JARVIS can identify you, so there aren't, like, keys or anything. If someone wants to see you, JARVIS will tell you they're requesting entry.”

“Who is JARVIS?” Rogers asks, glancing around.

Tony grins as he steps into the elevator car. “JARVIS runs the house, Snowflake.”

The doors close, and Tony is whisked away. He leans against the wall, breathing hard, hands shaking.

“Take me to Barnes' floor,” he tells JARVIS, taking in gulps of air.

“Captain Barnes is currently on Agent Romanov's floor,” JARVIS tells him. “Are you alright, Sir?”

“Fine,” Tony swallows, standing straight again, closing his eyes, trying to force himself to remain calm. “I mean, I just survived giving a super assassin a tour of his new room in my tower, but I'm fine. Take me to see Bucky and Natasha, then.”

“Of course, Sir,” JARVIS says, and Tony glances gratefully up at the ceiling at the gentle tone.

 

\+ + + + +

 

“And you just fucking left him there?” Bucky asks, pulling a T-shirt on. Natasha tightens the belt of her robe, and Tony carefully doesn't ogle her because, again, he still likes his balls right where they are.

“Relax, Cap. JARVIS is monitoring him. J, what's Rogers doing right now?”

“Captain Rogers is currently sitting on the sofa in his living room,” JARVIS says.

“And what's he doing there?” Tony asks, a little smug.

“He appears to be speaking to himself in Russian.”

Tony's brow furrows, and Bucky gives him a glare, headed for the elevator.

“What's he saying to himself, JARVIS?” Bucky asks.

“He is repeating the words 'I can be a person,'” JARVIS responds, no inflection in his voice.

“Oh, God, Stevie,” Bucky says sadly, leaning his forehead against the elevator wall.

Tony grimaces. “Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have left him alone,” he admits.

“He has a lot to process,” Natasha says, voice even. “The important part is that he _ came _ here. That means he  _ wants _ to be here.”

“Okay. I guess it's time to go talk to him,” Bucky says, but he doesn't sound excited about it.

“Want me to come?” Tony asks, not sure why he's hoping the answer is 'yes'.

“No. It's better if it's just me, for now,” Bucky says, just before the elevator doors close.

Tony looks back at Natasha, who shrugs a little and moves toward the kitchen.

“Tea?” she asks him, gesturing toward the little breakfast table there. Tony rubs at the side of his face for a moment, noticing his stubble is a little pronounced, before moving to sit in the chair she'd indicated.

“Sorry to wake you,” he says.

“I don't mind,” she says. “James needs this. Captain Rogers needs it, too.”

“Yeah,” he says.

She turns a gas burner on under her tea kettle, and leans against the counter, crossing her arms and looking at him.

“It's nice that you're helping him,” she says after a moment.

“Who, Bucky? Of course I'm helping him.”

“No, Rogers,” she says. “I know a little bit about what it's like to have done the unthinkable. He'll need all the understanding he can get.”

“He didn't – I saw the files. _ You _ saw the files. They made him... not a person anymore.”

“Yes,” she agrees with a nod.

“That isn't... how do you do that to someone? How do you destroy everything about what they are, and do it to them again and again?”

She shrugs. “They're Hydra.”

He rests his chin in his hands, watching her.

“Why do you think he remembers?”

She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, they wiped his memory, over and over again, right?” Tony says. She nods. “Okay, well, why did they have to do it more than once? And why does he remember some things now?”

“I'm not sure,” she says. He meets her eye as she brings him a mug of chamomile tea. He takes a sip and makes a face. God, he hates chamomile. It needs a shot of whisky.

He thinks maybe she's not telling the whole truth.

 

\+ + + + +

 

After he drinks half the mug of tea, mostly out of a sense of duty, Tony leaves Natasha to go back to bed, and goes up to his own suite as well. He putters for a little while, drinks a glass of bourbon – to try and get the taste of chamomile out of his mouth – and then crawls into his bed. It doesn't take long to fall asleep.

Tony has nightmares, as usual. Yawning stretches of space, filled with stars, emptiness, and an alien horde. Suffocating. Darkness.

He wakes up sweating, and can see that it's light out so he doesn't bother trying to go back to sleep. He gets up, instead, grateful for the scent of coffee JARVIS has already started brewing.

“JARVIS, is anyone else up yet?”

“Captain Rogers and Captain Barnes are still awake in Captain Rogers' suite,” JARVIS tells him. “Agents Barton and Romanov are still asleep, as is Airman Wilson. Dr. Banner is engaging in his morning yoga practice.”

Tony gives a little shudder at the thought of morning yoga.

“Do Bucky and Rogers need coffee? Ask them if they'd like me to bring them some. We didn't get groceries in Rogers' suite yet.” He pauses to think about it. “Put that on the list, too. Full grocery order.”

After a moment, JARVIS answers back. “Captain Barnes indicated that they would appreciate some coffee, Sir.”

Tony pours a couple of mugs and juggles the three of them in his hands as he steps onto the elevator. It takes him down to Rogers' floor.

“I bring the heavenly nectar of life,” he announces as he steps into the living area. He glances at the two men in the room.

They both look exhausted – their eyes look bruised, and their skin looks a little on the sallow side, but Bucky looks happier than he has in weeks, and the tight lines around Rogers' mouth have softened. It makes him look impossibly young, even with the haunted look in his eyes.

“Thanks, Tony. Did you sleep well?” Bucky asks him, reaching up and taking one of the mugs. He passes it directly to Steve, then takes another for himself. He leans back on the sofa, and Tony sits himself in the armchair beside Rogers' side of the couch.

“I slept,” Tony says, skirting the question. “What about you two? Spend the night braiding each other's hair?”

Rogers pointedly runs a hand over his brush cut, an unimpressed look on his face. Tony can't help but snicker, and Rogers looks pleased with himself – still stoic, but pleased.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “We're catching up. Stevie, tell him what you remember.”

Rogers gives Bucky a look that Tony would identify as being reticent to be treated like a show pony, but he inclines his head and meets Tony's eye with a sly look. “I remembered Bucky here tried to get fresh with a maple tree the first time he ever tried whisky,” he says.

Tony outright guffaws. Bucky is looking somehow horrified and pleased at the same time. Rogers just sits back and takes a sip of his coffee. His eyes close, and his jaw goes slack with pleasure at the taste, and Tony finds his laughter dying as his mouth goes dry.

Crap.

Tony isn't _ blind _ . Of course he'd noticed Steve Rogers is a very attractive man. Tall, fair, piercing blue eyes with long, dark lashes. Soft-looking pink lips, shoulders that are, what, twice the width of his waist? And, of course, other _ assets,  _ which may or may not be showcased in leather pants.

But still. Tony can be aware of someone's attractiveness without actually being _ attracted _ to them.

He _ can _ .

_ Crap _ .

“God, Steve, you're still a punk,” Bucky says after a moment. “At least that didn't change.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

Tony goes down to the common floor a few days later, finally crawling out of the workshop after a bit of a bender. He hadn't exactly been _ avoiding _ Rogers, he was just working. Important work. He still has work to do, after all.

He's tired, and honestly he's not sure why he's going to the common floor first instead of straight to bed, since he's been working long enough that he's not sure what day it is, or what he might smell like. But he's also been alone in that workshop, and he just wants to see another person before he goes to bed.

He walks into the common dining area, and there are only two people present, sitting at the table with mugs of tea. Rogers and Natasha are sitting there, Rogers hunched in on himself a little. Tony's not sure what they're talking about – they're speaking Russian, and he only knows a few words: 'please', 'thank you', and 'make it a double'. He's better with French and Italian, honestly.

Natasha looks up when he enters, and Rogers turns as well. Natasha gives him a small nod in greeting, leaning back in her chair. Rogers gives him a ghost of a smile, eyes warming instantly. Tony tries not to dwell on it.

“Tony,” Natasha says. “Nice of you to join the land of the living.”

Tony shrugs and runs a hand through his hair. “Did I miss anything important?”

Natasha starts giving him a rundown of Avengers business, though it's nothing important. Any calls to assemble would have come through to the workshop. Tony struggles to pay attention – for the first time, he's noticed that Rogers is wearing a sleeveless shirt instead of the long sleeves to hide his arm. Now that he has the time to look at it, without having a hand wrapped around his neck, he can really appreciate the simple beauty of the appendage. Shining silver alloy – what is that? It can't be steel – and a deep, red star on the shoulder. Articulating plates.

It's just good engineering.

Natasha stops speaking, coming to the conclusion that he's not paying attention.

Rogers glances down at his arm, where Tony's gaze is trained, then back up to his eyes. He doesn't speak, but there's a question in his eyes. He squares his shoulders, almost in defiance.

Tony meets his eye. “Sorry, it's just – it's impressive tech,” he says. “To have the range of motion it has, without sacrificing speed. How do you control it?”

Rogers furrows his brow. “I just do.”

“How did they attach it?”

“I was a little out of it,” Rogers says, his voice dry. “It's a bit foggy.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “Why is it that you remember some things but not others?”

Rogers shrugs his right shoulder a little. “The wipes were ... flawed,” he says after a moment. “Any time I was out of cryo for very long, I'd start to remember bits and pieces. Slowly at first, but now that I've been out this long, it's more and more.”

“Your brain is rebuilding the connections,” Natasha says, and Tony wants to glare at her. That had been the most he'd ever witnessed Rogers speak at a time, and he feels like she's cheated him out of continuing to enjoy the experience.

“Would – can I run some tests?” Tony asks after a moment.

Rogers blinks at him. “What kind of tests?” Tony can't be sure, the movement is so subtle, but it almost looks as though Rogers shrinks back a little in his chair.

“Nothing invasive,” he promises. “A little bit of brain mapping, maybe some scans.”

Rogers studies him for a moment, and it's only when his shoulders relax that Tony gets confirmation that he really _ had _ tensed at the question.

“Maybe,” he says, finally.

Tony gives him his most disarming grin, then whirls and heads back for the elevator.

“I'm going to go get a couple of hours sleep,” he says, giving Rogers a wave. “I'll come find you when I'm ready.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

When Tony wakes, it's late afternoon. After a hot shower, he goes looking for Rogers, and finds him in the common floor's TV room with Bucky and Sam.

The three of them are watching a baseball game on the big screen, and when Tony walks in, Sam's in the process of throwing a handful of popcorn at the screen in disgust. Bucky laughs gleefully, raising a hand in Rogers' direction, palm out.

Rogers stares at it for a long moment. Bucky's smile doesn't falter while he gives Rogers an encouraging nod, so Rogers finally raises his hand in a mirror image and Bucky gives him a high five.

Tony tries not to laugh at the adorably confused look on Rogers' face. He isn't terribly successful.

“Who are we rooting for?” he asks, moving into the room.

“Mets,” Sam says, grumpily, at the same time Bucky replies with “Dodgers.”

Tony glances between them.

“How any self-respecting New Yorker can root for the Goddamned Dodgers,” Sam mutters, but there's no heat in it.

“I don't care where they are now, they're still the Brooklyn Dodgers,” Bucky replies.

Rogers glances up at Tony with a slight shrug.

“You have _ two _ actual New York teams to follow,” Sam starts.

“You keep your heretical bullshit to yourself, Wilson,” Bucky grins. “We'll have none of that.”

Tony sits down on the arm of the coach and reaches into Sam's popcorn bowl for a handful.

“Haven't seen you in a couple days, man,” Sam says, tilting the bowl. “Been working on anything special?”

Tony shoves the popcorn in his mouth and crunches for a minute before talking around it. “I think I've solved the manoeuvrability problem with your new repulsor pack,” he says. The nature of the first repulsor pack he'd made for Sam had meant he'd had to rely too much on the wings to bank, which could be a bit of a problem in a tight spot. Tony had set out to re-engineer it so the wings were more supplemental – and decorative – than they are now. “I should have a prototype for you to try by tomorrow.”

Sam rubs his hands together gleefully.

“How come Sam gets all the cool new toys?” Clint asks, coming into the common room. He flops down on the couch beside Sam and reaching for the popcorn.

“Because Sam hasn't been annoying me as long as you have, and he doesn’t use a weapon from the Paleolithic era,” Tony says.

“Oh, come on!” Sam growls at the TV, and Tony looks up.

“And that's the game!” Bucky crows as Dodgers players round the bases.

“Who's in the mood for movie night later?” Clint asks, reaching for another handful of popcorn and pointedly ignoring Tony’s dig. Sam holds the bowl out for him.

“Set it up,” Tony says, standing up from the arm of the couch. “Round everyone up. Is Thor coming back to Earth anytime soon?”

Clint shrugs. “He doesn't exactly send postcards.”

Tony glares, then turns to Rogers.

“Hey, got an hour or so? I'd like to run those tests we talked about.”

Rogers glances at Bucky, who nods at him encouragingly again.

Rogers gets to his feet, and Tony grins up at him. He tries to make his expression as charming and comforting as possible.

“Come on, then,” he says, leading the way to the elevator. He turns around once he's stepped into the car and watches Rogers, graceful as a big cat, move into the elevator with him.

“JARVIS, workshop, please,” he says.

Rogers doesn't say anything as they wait for the elevator to travel the few floors to Tony's workshop.

Tony starts to lead Rogers across the space toward the back, where he has the equipment needed to run the neurological mapping tests he needs.

Halfway across the room, DUM-E rolls up to him, chirping and beeping happily.

“Oh, relax, Rust-bucket, I've been gone for nine hours. You're fine.”

He turns to show Rogers where to sit, but Rogers is in a defensive stance in the middle of the room, ready for an attack, eyes tracking DUM-E warily.

“Whoa,” Tony says, putting his hands up placatingly. “Hey, Game of Thrones, relax,” he says, taking a careful step forward. “That's DUM-E. He won't hurt you.”

“What is it?”

“He's a helper bot,” Tony says. He grins ruefully. “Well, he's supposed to be, but mostly he just sprays fire extinguishers all over the place and tries to feed me motor-oil smoothies. But – he won't hurt you.”

DUM-E is tilting his claw from side to side, studying Rogers like a golden retriever.

Rogers steps forward hesitantly, holding his flesh hand out toward DUM-E. DUM-E rolls forward to get closer, and Rogers yanks his hand back. Tony's about to remind him that DUM-E is friendly, but Rogers puts his hand out again on his own. After another moment's hesitation, he brushes a finger over the smooth surface of DUM-E's claw, and DUM-E makes a happy chirping noise.

“Hello, DUM-E,” he says quietly. Tony tries to ignore the way his heart melts at the display. He doesn't think anyone he's ever brought into the workshop has greeted DUM-E so... naturally.

Rogers gives DUM-E another pat, a small smile on his face, before turning back up to Tony, who schools his expression to a neutral one.

“Okay,” Tony says, ignoring the hoarseness of his own voice. “Let's run some tests.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

They don't talk much while Tony administers his tests. Tony's skin tingles whenever he has to touch Rogers, even when it's just to move an electrode. He feels like a monster every time he thrills at the contact, because Rogers is – well, not _ damaged _ , but he's been Through Some Shit (TM), which Tony is intimately familiar with, and he knows that when he came back from Afghanistan he probably would have reacted poorly to unwanted physical contact.

So he keeps his mind out of the gutter, and bites his lip when Rogers has to take his shirt off for more electrode placement.

He'd known the guy had a body on him. Obviously – super soldier, and a big guy like that, and the T-shirt hadn't hidden _ that _ much, but this was different. This was miles of soft, white skin.

“Sorry,” Rogers says, looking down at the floor.

“Huh?” Tony shakes his head, confused. “What are you...?”

“The scars,” Rogers says, gesturing to the marred skin where the fabricated arm joins his flesh. It looks puckered and angry, and Tony honestly hadn't noticed it.

“Oh, hey,” he says, suddenly impossibly sad. “Don't. Don't feel bad about that.”

“It's just – I know it's not nice to look at.” Rogers takes a breath, then, more quietly: “Bucky doesn't like to look at it.”

Tony has a sudden fleeting, insane thought that there could be something going on between Bucky and Rogers, but he instantly shakes the thought away. Bucky and Natasha are a ... thing ... and even Rogers ought to be afraid of Natasha if she's feeling slighted.

Tony eyes Rogers for a moment, then unbuttons his own shirt. He lets it fall open, and then, as Rogers looks at him quizzically, lifts the T-shirt under it and reveals the arc reactor.

He holds the shirt with one hand, then knocks on the reactor with his knuckles of his other hand.

“See this?”

Rogers meets his eye, then looks back down to the reactor. His expression is a mixture of confusion, interest, and even a little bit of awe.

“This little guy here powers an electromagnet that keeps the shrapnel in my chest from making its way to my heart and killing me,” Tony says cheerfully.

Rogers' jaw drops and his gaze shoots up to Tony's, face full of horror.

“Who would do that to you?”

Tony wonders if he's crazy, because the look in Rogers' eyes is turning rapidly into anger, maybe even ... protectiveness?

“I did,” he says. Rogers' eyes narrow, confused again, so Tony continues. “Well, technically, someone else did it for me, I just improved the design. The point is, you're not the only one with ... modifications. That doesn't mean you should be ashamed.”

“But it's not –” Rogers starts.

“It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's part of you. And, quite frankly, that arm is a beautiful piece of tech,” Tony says. “I mean, I wish I'd designed it myself. It's gorgeous.”

He realizes how that sounds, and he blushes a little.

“You think so?” Rogers asks, meeting his eye again. This time, Tony has no idea what his expression might be.

“Sure,” Tony says, quickly turning to fiddle with his instruments.

“Okay, I think I'm set up here. Can you lift your arm?”

Rogers watches him for another moment, then lifts his arm. Tony watches the measurements jump across the holo screen, and tries not to think about the almost-moment they'd had a minute ago.

 

\+ + + + +

 

They get halfway through their movie night before Thor comes back to the tower. They're watching Good Will Hunting, under the silent unanimous agreement that they should keep action movies to a minimum until they feel like Rogers can deal with televised violence. That one had been Sam's idea, and they all sort of defer to Sam when it comes to PTSD.

Not that anyone is actually saying it out loud, but Tony's pretty sure that's what's going on. How could you be used as a brainwashed assassin for an evil organization for 70-odd years and not come out the other side a little worse for wear? Not that Tony himself would know anything about PTSD.

Not that he'd admit, anyway.

Lightning flashes outside, and Clint and Bucky share a grin, then Bucky turns to Rogers.

“Listen, Stevie, we're about to have company,” he says. “He's a friend. But he's very, very big, and very ... exuberant.”

Rogers blinks.

“I just – stay calm, okay? It's going to be fine.”

“And probably a little hilarious,” Clint chirps.

A few moments later, the elevator door opens and Thor walks in, cape billowing, hammer glinting in his hand.

“Friends!” he booms. “I have returned! How fare you?”

Tony watches Rogers' body transform. Where he'd been sitting on the floor in front of the couch in relaxed repose beside Bucky's knees, his every muscle tenses and his spine curves, and suddenly he's poised like a jungle cat, ready to pounce or flee.

Tony stands and heads straight for Thor, immediately putting himself between Rogers and Thor. He's not sure why he feels the need to get between what basically amounts to two heavily explosive freight trains, but he does.

“Hey, Thunder Thighs,” he says, stepping forward. “We have a guest.”

Thor's eyes light up and he grins that ridiculous cheerful grin of his, like nothing in the world can get him down. Sometimes Tony hates that grin, but today he's happy with it – it means there's a better chance that these introductions won't end in terrible bloodshed.

“Come! I would meet our new friend!”

“It's – kind of a long story,” Bucky says, glancing at Rogers.

Then Rogers is standing up – slowly, as though trying to avoid making any sudden moves.

“Thor, this is Steve Rogers. He's – uh – an old friend,” Bucky says, gesturing to Rogers. He turns to Rogers and gestures toward Thor. “Steve, this is Thor. He's, um, the God of Thunder?” Tony bites back a laugh at Bucky's tone, like he's not sure Rogers is going to believe his explanation.

“Welcome to Avengers Tower,” Thor booms, stepping forward, and – lightning fast – around Tony to pull Rogers into a full-body hug.

Everyone in the room tenses, leaning forward, ready to break up the inevitable brawl.

Tony watches in awe as a small smirk ticks up the corner of Rogers' lips. He doesn't quite hug back, which is probably for the best because that would be madness and Tony's not sure he can deal with that being his reality, but Rogers  _ allows _ the hug, meeting Thor's eyes when he steps back.

“It is good to meet a friend of Bucky's,” Thor says, voice filling the space of the room like smoke, getting into every corner and cranny.

Thor flops on the sofa, placing his hammer on the coffee table in front of him, reaching for the bowl of popcorn Clint had abandoned when it looked like they were about to have a battle on their hands.

Clint blinks owlishly at Tony, who mirrors his expression.

“What are we watching?” Thor asks.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Weeks later, Tony has to take off to Japan for a few Stark Industries meetings. It's boring, and tedious, and he hates it, but Pepper is really, really good about making sure he doesn't have to do much with SI these days other than send designs and prototypes once in awhile, so he goes without complaint.

Well, he goes without _ much _ complaint.

Well, he  _ goes _ , anyway.

The first day, he asks JARVIS how everyone in the tower is doing without him.

“The Avengers are, as always, in good health, Sir,” JARVIS answers him. Tony feels silly, but two days later, he asks again.

“The Avengers are fine, Sir,” JARVIS says again.

“What about – what about Captain Rogers?” he asks, hesitantly. He's not sure why he's hesitating – if anyone in the world is actually incapable of judging him, it's JARVIS.  Tony has been avoiding his burgeoning feelings for weeks, but now that he’s not actually at the tower, all he can think about is Rogers, with his big, blue doe eyes and his tortured, brooding,  _ gorgeous _ – God, Tony’s such a sap.

“Captain Rogers is currently heckling Ultimate Fighting Championship with Agent Barton,” JARVIS replies.

The fifth day, he asks again. “How's Rogers doing?”

“Captain Rogers is currently practicing meditation techniques with Dr. Banner,” JARVIS answers.  “Would you like me to ask him if he wishes to take a call?”

“No! No – no, thanks, J,” Tony says, heart pounding. “Jesus. Call him? Jesus, no,” he mutters to himself.

“I thought perhaps your increased interest in Captain Rogers indicated that you wished to speak with him directly, rather than continuing to ask for status updates,” JARVIS says archly.

“I never should have given you a personality,” Tony grumbles. So much for not judging him.

“Clearly,” JARVIS says. He sounds smug.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Against his better judgement, the first thing he does when he gets back to the tower in New York is ask JARVIS where Rogers is.

“Captain Rogers is currently in the common room,” JARVIS says.

“Take me up there?”

“Certainly, Sir,” JARVIS says, as the elevator starts moving.

Tony fidgets with his watch while the elevator ascends, swallowing nervously – God, why is he doing this to himself? He knows better. Whatever little crush he's managed to develop in what is, clearly, too short a time to develop a crush needs to stop. Rogers needs time to – to figure out who he is, figure out how to live in the world again. He can't do that with Tony sniffing around at him like a dog in heat with poor impulse control. God.

Still, he moves into the common room when the doors open. As soon as they slide open, Tony is assaulted by the sound of Thor's booming laugh.

He looks up, and Rogers and Thor are ... playing Mario Kart? That can't ... is that right? Tony blinks.

“I have vanquished my foe!” Thor announces, reaching over and patting Rogers on the shoulder with a thunderous thump.

And Rogers, of all things, grins. Tony tries not to read into it. He tries really, really hard. And besides – there's Jane. Thor wouldn't – no. Tony's just being paranoid, and stupid. Because even if there _ is _ a reason Rogers is grinning at Thor like – like that, it wouldn't matter, because Tony doesn't have any say in it. Because there's nothing between them – that would be ridiculous.

He doesn't say hello. He just stands there for a moment before climbing back into the elevator and waiting for the doors to close. They're almost shut, maybe two more inches to go, when he sees Rogers turn toward him, grin fading as the doors close.

“Workshop, J,” Tony says.

“Of course, Sir,” JARVIS says, gently, and he doesn't question Tony's change of heart because JARVIS understands him.

He has time to take off his suit coat and drape it over a stool in the shop, and start opening holo screens with various specifications on them before JARVIS interrupts him.

“Captain Rogers is in the elevator requesting entry.”

Tony blinks. “Uh – yeah, okay, let him in,” he says with a sigh. He tries to make his hands look busy.

The doors slide open, and Rogers stalks in, graceful and deadly. Tony loses his breath at the power in that simple action – just walking into a room.

“You didn't say hello,” Rogers says, sounding put out.

“I – yeah, sorry, I had an idea, I had to come down and – you know me, no attention span, had to get it down before I forgot it,” Tony blurts. “I mean, you know, you don't actually, I guess, know me that well, but still.”

Rogers watches him for a moment, the look of an argument in his eyes, until DUM-E sprints across the workshop floor, chirping and beeping joyfully.

“Hello,” Rogers says, finally, after a moment, voice rough as he reaches out to pat DUM-E, who trills happily at him.

Tony watches for a moment, trying to ignore the tugging at his heart.

“You – um, did you have a good week?” Tony asks after a moment.

Rogers stretches back to his full height, shrugging one shoulder and glaring hatefully at the floor. “A couple of rough days,” he says. “Remembered more.”

“That's good,” Tony says carefully.

“Not – not always,” Rogers says.

Tony takes a deep breath. “Did you – did you want to hang out in here with me? While I work?”

“Do you have any paper?” Rogers asks.

Tony blinks at him. Literally everything he does is paperless.

“Do I ... huh. J? Do I have paper in the workshop?”

“There is an assortment of writing pads in the drawer of the third tool bench, Sir,” JARVIS answers. Tony moves to the third tool bench, and rummages in the drawer for a moment before coming up with a pad of paper and handing it to Rogers, who has managed to move next to him without making a single sound.

Tony manages not to jump in surprise, so he's pretty sure he should get an award. The ‘Did Not Jump When A Super Assassin Snuck Up On Him’ award. Rhodey could present it to him, to make up for that whole Apogee thing, which Rhodey still brings up at least three times a year because he's living in the past.

“Pencil?” Rogers asks, taking the pad.

Tony blinks and turns to dig in the drawer again, coming up with a simple yellow No. 2 pencil. He holds it out to Rogers, who takes it, letting his fingers brush against Tony's as he does so. Tony swallows hard.

“Thank you,” Rogers says. After a beat, he moves toward the little couch Tony has set up down here. More often than not he curls up on it for a nap when he just can't keep working anymore, and it's far too small even for him, but Rogers folds himself down onto it, flips open the pad, and starts scribbling.

“Are you – are you drawing?” Tony asks after a moment, trying to ignore the way his voice sounds thready and thin.

“Yes,” Rogers says, his hand still moving. “I remembered – well, Bucky mentioned it, and I remembered. Sam said it might help with – with feeling ...”

“Anxious?” Tony asks, after the pause has drawn out a little too long. He knows that feeling all too well. Especially at the moment.

“Yes. And – like I could crack apart,” Rogers says, his voice trailing off.

Tony knows that feeling, too. He also knows that words aren't going to help with it, so he just lets Rogers sit on his couch, sketching, while he goes back to his projects.

He messes around a little, then actually does get engrossed in the work and solves a balance problem with Clint's new arrows. When he turns around again, Rogers isn't sketching anymore. He's playing with DUM-E instead.

Playing might be a bit of an exaggeration, actually – he's more making a delicate paper crane out of a piece of paper from the writing pad, and handing it over to DUM-E, who beeps over it excitedly. Rogers places it on DUM-E's struts, and DUM-E whirls in a little circle, beeping.

Tony watches for a moment, feeling like there's a sharp thread between his heart and his throat that's threatening to break at the slightest provocation.

“Most people don't – they don't pay attention to him,” Tony says, after watching for another minute.

Rogers glances up, blinking.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“Oh, you don't need to apologize,” Tony says. “It's – well, it's sweet.”

Rogers holds Tony's eye for a long stretch, then looks back down to the floor, the fingers of his left hand clenching and unclenching, servos whirring quietly.

“Hey,” Tony says, taking a step toward him. He stops when Rogers holds up his right hand, staying him. “Hey,” Tony says again. “What's wrong?”

“I have to tell you something,” Rogers says, and his voice sounds more broken than Tony's ever heard it. “I – I remembered something, while you were gone, and I can't – I have to tell you.”

“Okay,” Tony says.

“It's – you're going to – it's okay, if you can't –”

“Hey,” Tony says, taking another step forward. “Breathe, Frosty, just take a breath.”

Rogers does, and then another and a third, and then he looks up, straight into Tony's eyes.

“Your parents,” he says, stilted. “They – I knew your father. Before – before the train. I – I knew him. Your parents didn't – it wasn't an accident.”

Tony feels the blood rushing to his head, feels his lungs tighten, sees the world go dark around the edges.

“They – they gave me a mission. He had something, in the trunk of the car, I had to – they said no witnesses,” Rogers continues. His face is scrunched up, his voice is breaking, but he keeps talking, ignoring the way his face is getting more and more red, as though he would cry if his body could produce the tears.

Tony wants to scream at him, to make him stop, stop talking, he can't know this, he can't hear it, but he can't speak, can't get air to go out past his vocal chords.

“Your father – your mother – I had to –” Rogers says, and he's breathing hard, almost hyperventilating, and Tony can't handle it anymore, he takes a step back, another, then goes straight for the elevator, holding a hand up in warning when it looks like Rogers might try to follow him, and he slams into the back wall of the elevator, trying to force air into his lungs, trying to breathe, trying to see past the buzzing in his ears. He presses his forehead against the cool wall, hard.

Rogers killed his parents.

The doors close, and he slides down the wall to his knees.


	4. The Winter Soldier: A Ghost Story

_ It sits in the wipe chair, flashes of something – is it memory? Is it a hallucination? – invading its mind. A train. Cold snow. A man with glasses. _

_ “Captain Rogers,” the man says, grinning. _

_ The man from the bridge, reaching for him as he falls – “Steve!” _

_ So cold. _

_ “You are to be the new fist of Hydra.” _

_ Pain. _

_ Pain. _

_ Pain. _

_ It's so cold. _

_ It lashes out, hitting one of the handlers. Another handler trains a gun on it, and it sits, still and panting. _

_ The lead handler comes in. There are guns trained on it from all around the room. It doesn't care. _

_ “Mission report,” the lead handler commands. _

_ It doesn't know how to answer. _

_ “Mission report. Now.” _

_ It still doesn't answer, and then – familiar pain. Backhand across the face. Punishment earned. _

_ “The man on the bridge,” it finally says. “Who was he?” _

_ “You met him earlier this week on another assignment,” the handler tells it. _

_ It pauses. It doesn't understand. “I knew him.” _

_ The handler sits down. _

_ “Your work has been a gift to mankind,” the handler tells it. “You shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time. Society's at a tipping point between order and chaos – tomorrow morning we're going to give it a push. But if you don't do your part, I can't do mine ... and Hydra can't give the world the freedom it deserves.” _

_ It doesn't understand. It knows it should – should remember? No, that's not right, it never remembers. It's not supposed to remember. _

_ But it remembers. _

_ “But I knew him,” it says. It wants them to fix it. _

_ The handler studies him for a moment. “Prep him,” he says to a technician. _

_ “He's been out of cryofreeze too long.” _

_ “Then wipe him and start over.” _

_ It is disappointed, and scared, but relieved. It won't be confused anymore. It won't remember. _

_ They push it back into the chair, and it opens its mouth for the bite guard. _

_ They will wipe it, and it will no longer be confused. _

_ It breathes hard as the restraints clamp around its arm, and the apparatus shifts down around its head. _

_ This is better. _

_ It won't remember. _

_ Pain. _

_ He won't remember. _

_ Pain. _

_ He doesn't remember. _

_ Pain. _

_ He is the Soldier. _

He wakes up hot, eyes wild as he pants through his nose. He's on the floor, crouched against the wall, ready for danger.

Except there is no danger here, he knows. He _ knows _ . This is safe. There is Bucky, and Tony, and Natasha. They are kind, and good, and they don't hurt him. They take care of him. They treat him like a person. He's a  _ person _ now.

_ Murderer. _

“You are Captain Steven Grant Rogers, born July 4, 1918. You are in New York City, currently residing on the seventy-second floor of Avengers Tower,” comes the accented voice from the ceiling. JARVIS. “It is 4:37 in the morning on Tuesday, June sixth.”

He feels his breathing start to return to normal.

“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS asks hesitantly.

“Again, please,” he breathes.

“You are Captain Steven Grant Rogers, born July 4, 1918. Hydra does not have you. You are safe.”

Steve takes a deep breath in, then huffs it out. “Breathe, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS tells him. “You are safe.”

Steve takes another breath, then another.

All at once, the feeling of dread, of impending doom, subsides.

The first time he'd woken up from a nightmare and panicked, he'd been trapped in the corner for more than an hour. The second time, it had been an hour and a half. Bucky had found him there, wild-eyed and sweating, unable to move, and had coaxed him out into the living room where he'd served Steve a cup of tea that Steve couldn't actually bring to his mouth without spilling all over himself because of the tremor in his hand.

The third time, Bucky had been away on a mission with Natasha and Clint, so JARVIS had alerted Tony about the problem. Tony had come down and sat on the floor a few feet away, waiting him out.

Once Steve was calm enough to get in enough air to speak, Tony had shuffled closer.

“You know, I once flew my suit of armour into outer space,” he'd said, as though talking about the weather. “I had to take a nuclear missile into a portal to save all of Manhattan.”

Steve just looked at him, teeth chattering.

“I find it helps with the panic attacks to breathe through them. To have a mantra. A reminder of where I am, and that everything's going to be okay.”

Steve blinked at him. “Panic attacks?”

“That's what's going on, Rogers. That's why you can't breathe, you're having a panic attack. Didn't you know that?”

Steve shook his head.

“Okay, well. I think I know what will help.”

Steve watched the way Tony's warm, brown eyes stared at him. He'd wondered at the time what Tony's lips would feel like, as he often does, but he's not allowed that – can't be allowed that, so he'd pushed it away, like he always does.

“JARVIS?” Tony said, taking a sip from the coffee he'd brought with him. He pushed another cup that had been resting at his side toward Steve, who took it with a hum. Tony always has the best coffee.

“JARVIS, implement Protocol 'Elm Street' for Captain Rogers' suite,” he said.

“Consider it done, Sir,” JARVIS replied.

“What does that mean?”

“JARVIS is able to read your vitals anywhere in the tower,” Tony explained, shifting against the wall. “He can read your heart rate, your respiratory activity. He'll be able to tell when you're having a nightmare, or a panic attack, and he can talk you through it.”

Steve wasn't sure that was going to work, and told Tony as much.

Tony just shrugged at him. “It may not. But it can't hurt to try,” he'd said.

It had not hurt to try. In fact, Steve does feel better when JARVIS is able to talk him through the panic attacks. It doesn't work every time, of course, but more often than not he's back to himself, under control, within minutes. The protocol has been helping more and more often over the weeks he’s been at the tower.

“Thank you, JARVIS,” he says on this particular morning, once his breathing has moved back to normal, and the images from his most recent nightmare –  _ Pain, pain, pain  _ – have retreated into the back of his mind.

“My pleasure, Captain.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face, wondering if he should go down to the gym. Sam had suggested that he spend more time in the gym. The activity would help with the anxiety, the flashbacks, he'd said.

He decides going down to the gym is better than staying here, dwelling on what had happened with Tony the night before.

“You had to tell him,” Bucky had said, soothingly, a comforting hand on Steve's shoulder. Steve just shook, as though he was trying to expel the pain and terror he was feeling. He's still feeling it, so clearly the shaking hadn't helped.

He's terrified that Tony won't be able to look at him again.

Bucky always looks at him with sad eyes, and the others look at him as though he's something to be wary of, studied. Thor seems to treat him the same as he treats everyone else – amusing to him. But Tony ... Tony doesn't just treat him like a person, Tony treats him like he's a person who could be cared for.

He knows Bucky cares. They all do, really. But when Steve feels like he's going to break apart in the night, like the weight of the monstrosities he's committed will bury him and he'll deserve it, he can think of the way Tony looks at him – like he is good, and can be _ good _ – and he feels less like shattering.

But now – now Tony knows. He hadn't stayed long enough for Steve to tell him how he'd crushed Howard Stark's skull with his fist, a man who had been his friend, once, how he had gone around to the other side of the car and slowly cut off the woman's – _ Tony's mother's _ – air until she was dead, too. How Howard had recognized him, and had sounded like he was both surprised and resigned. “Steve?” he had said. Like Steve had been a human, like Steve was someone to – it didn't matter.

_ It doesn't matter, _ he tells himself.

And Tony had left. Of course he had left. Why wouldn't he?

_ Disgusting monster. _

How could he have stayed, after hearing what Steve had done?

_ Murderer _ .

Steve goes down to the gym, and he destroys three punching bags before he's able to stop his teeth from grinding.

 

\+ + + + +

 

_ Fire. There is fire. _

_ There are bodies – small ones – nearby, but he does not slow down. He prowls through the smoke, taking no notice of it. His target is – yes, there, the woman. She is crying, hiding, attempting to keep him from completing his mission. _

_ He will complete his mission. _

_ He reaches for his knife – it is long, and gleams in the low light of the stars from out the window. The target screams, begs, but it means nothing to him. He reaches forward, plunging the blade in, and there is a gurgle, the target is crying. He slices down, lifts the blade and plunges it in again. His hand is warm where the blood pours over it, and when he lets go of the woman, she slumps to the floor. _

_ “Please, help me,” she whimpers, and he does not know to whom she is speaking. _

_ He can't help her. _

 

\+ + + + +

 

He wakes up on the floor again. This is the fourth night in a row – ever since he'd told Tony about ... about what he'd done. He's trembling, curled in the corner, whimpering. He thinks there might be tears on his face, and it makes him huff out a hysterical sound. As though he could ever deserve the salvation of remorse.

“You are Captain Steven Grant Rogers, born July 4, 1918. You are in New York City, currently residing on the seventy-second floor of Avengers Tower,” says JARVIS. “It is 5:23 in the morning on Tuesday, June ninth.”

Steve lets out a sound like a wounded animal.

“You are Captain Steven Grant Rogers,” JARVIS repeats, sounding more insistent this time, “born July 4, 1918. Hydra does not have you. You are safe.”

Steve sobs, just once. “Breathe, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS tells him, his tone gentle. “You are safe.”

Steve takes a breath. It feels like shards of ice in his chest.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Steve makes his way out to the kitchen and starts a pot of coffee. Once it's finished brewing, he pours himself a large cup and moves to the elevator.

His routine, now, is to take his coffee up to the roof in the mornings. It's warm enough, and his body temperature runs hot enough, that even the morning chill doesn't bother him. He likes the quiet anticipation of the city as it's beginning to wake up. He finds it soothing – if New York is starting another day, then he can manage that much as well.

He steps out onto the roof, moving toward the little seating area in the centre. He sits down and takes a long sip of his coffee, watching the world around him start the day.

Calm, quiet moments like these are a double-edged sword for him. He feels like a person, who can maybe have a life, when it's nice like this. There's no one looking at him like they're waiting for him to magically turn back into a fresh-faced young man who's never seen the horrors he's perpetrated. Not that he blames Bucky for it, but it's been long enough by now that watching Bucky's face fall every time Steve behaves in a way he hadn't expected is getting to be a bit grating.

At the same time, when it's quiet, he has to clench his fists and try not to hear the screams of the dead in the back of his mind. He knows he deserves that pain.

“That wasn't you,” Bucky tells him all the time.

“Sure it was,” Steve tells him. “My hands did it.”

“But it wasn't because you wanted to. We all know that.”

“I still did it,” Steve shrugs. And then Bucky's face falls, again, and Steve feels disquieted, guilty, and angry at the same time.

Steve sighs, and takes another sip of his coffee. He hears the elevator doors open behind him, and his posture only tenses for a moment before he relaxes. Steve hadn't exactly expected Tony to seek him out. Tony doesn't sleep enough, either.

“Morning, Tall, Dark & Hypothermic,” Tony says, moving over to one of the vacant chairs with his own cup of coffee.

“Why don't you call me by my name?” Steve asks him, swallowing another mouthful of his coffee. He's thought about asking the question over and over for some time now, especially as the nicknames get more and more obscure, but something about this cool, calm morning makes him think it's safe to ask it. And the fact that Tony has sought him out.

Tony doesn't answer for a moment. “You know, I'm not actually sure,” he says, huffing out a laugh. “I just don't. I don't call most people by their names.”

“You call Bucky by his name.”

“There's nothing more embarrassing I can call a grown man besides 'Bucky.'”

“You call Natasha by her name.”

“I'm _ terrified _ of Natasha.”

Steve smirks. “You can call me Steve, you know,” he says. “I don't mind. I'd – I'd like it.”

Tony tilts his head as though trying to measure Steve. He feels exposed under the scrutiny.

“All right,” Tony says after a moment. “Steve.”

And Steve tries to ignore the slight flutter in his belly at the sound of his name on Tony's lips.

“You know, you aren't the only one who has nightmares,” Tony reminds him after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

“I know,” Steve says.

“Yours may not even be the worst, out of all of us. I bet at least Natasha could give you a run for your money.”

Steve shrugs.

“You – it might help if you talked about them,” Tony says after a moment.

“I doubt it,” Steve replies.

“Try me.”

“Blood. Blood and screaming,” Steve says, his throat tight.

“Who?”

“Everyone,” he whispers.

“Who did you enjoy killing the most?” Tony asks him.

Steve's head jerks up and he looks at Tony in disbelief. “Why would – you know I didn't enjoy any of them,” he says, feeling betrayed.

“Really? Not one?”

“Of course not.”

“So you didn't want to do it, and you didn't enjoy doing it – but you're still happy to shoulder the guilt as though either one of those things were true?”

“That's not – that's not what I'm doing,” Steve says.

“Why don't you try pulling the other one? It plays 'Livin' La Vida Loca.'”

Steve glares at him.

Tony sighs and takes another sip of his coffee. “I'm just saying, maybe it's time to stop taking it all on as though you had a choice.”

Steve takes a sip of his own coffee and thinks about it. “I don't think that will work.”

“You know, I used to design weapons,” Tony says conversationally. “Did I ever tell you that?”

Steve shakes his head.

“Really? Huh. Usually I'm pretty committed to talking about myself,” Tony says, almost to himself. Steve feels a smile ghost across his lips. “Anyway, weapons. Military weapons. Billion-dollar contracts, that kind of thing. I built this one missile? Took out eight square miles, no nuclear capability necessary. It was impressively destructive.”

Steve's just looking at him, trying to figure out where Tony's going with this. He watches Tony's long, graceful fingers trace patterns in the air as he tells his story.

“So, anyway, turns out someone in my company was selling those weapons under the table to terrorists. All those weapons I single-handedly designed, they were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands.”

Steve isn't sure how he's expected to respond, so he chooses not to.

“I figure, if we're going by sheer numbers, I've definitely murdered more people than you.”

Steve pulls a face at him.

“Don't give me that face, _ Steve _ ,” Tony says.

“But you're a good man,” Steve says. “You didn't know where they were going.”

“But what about the ones I sold to the American military? Those killed people, too. And that was definitely intentional.”

“But you don't do that anymore,” Steve says.

“And neither do you,” Tony says with a shrug.

Steve stares at him. He's still not sure he believes Tony, not really. But at the same time, hearing Tony work so hard to convince him... hearing Tony believe in him...

It makes him think maybe he can have nice things, after all.

“What made you – you're here,” Steve says, after a moment. “You came to find me.”

Tony sighs, looking pensive. “I talked to Bruce. He made me realize – we keep telling you it's not your fault. Fuck, I just did.” He smiles, a little, but it doesn't reach his eyes. “The truth is, I can't say none of it was your fault, that you weren't in control, and then turn around and blame you for – for them.”

Steve concentrates on breathing.

“It's not – I don't want to hear about it. Ever, please, I don't think I can – but I know you didn't – I know it wasn't your choice.”

He gives Tony a tentative smile. Tony smiles back, and Steve watches Tony's eyes flick down to Steve's mouth.

“You look good in a smile, Steve,” he says quietly.

“You look good, too,” Steve says, not letting his gaze drop. He's taking a chance, he knows. But if it's unwelcome, Tony will let him know nicely, so it doesn't feel like he's taking too much of a _ risk _ .

Tony's eyes snap up to Steve's, and they just study each other for a moment. Finally, Steve leans forward and places his coffee gently on the table. He drops to his knees and moves over to the space in front of Tony's chair so they're face to face, and waits, silently asking permission.

Tony blinks, and a hand moves up to the side of Steve's neck, thumb brushing gently against his face. Steve shivers, and leans forward.

[If you have downloaded this work to a mobile app, you can click this link to see the art by Cazdinal.](http://68.media.tumblr.com/74c4da93d083c0dc62e160dbbc7982d3/tumblr_ogu954cKdM1tqwrxgo1_500.png)

He hesitates again just inches from Tony's mouth, searching Tony's gaze. He sees a flicker of something – relief, or anticipation, he's not sure, but he decides it's at least positive, permissive, and he closes the distance, letting his mouth slot against Tony's.

It's a soft, gentle kiss. Steve's mouth slides against Tony's, slick and warm, just for a moment, before he pulls back, and stands up.

“I wondered what that would feel like,” Steve sighs.

“Verdict?” Tony asks, sounding a little breathless.

“About how I'd hoped,” Steve says, picking up his coffee cup and heading toward the elevator. He gets on, and doesn't look back.

[If you have downloaded this work to a mobile app, you can click this link to see the art by Cazdinal.](http://68.media.tumblr.com/4e9f4f536596cc1ebc2a2bba0ed23551/tumblr_ogu954cKdM1tqwrxgo2_500.png)

 

\+ + + + +

 

As soon as Steve gets back to his own floor, he starts shaking. He hadn't been afraid to kiss Tony before he did it. He had been curious, and nervous, but he hadn't been afraid.

Now, though, the fear has crept in and it leaves him sitting in the middle of his sitting room, hugging his knees to his chest and shaking.

“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS asks him. “I am reading an elevated heart rate. Are you all right? Shall I ask Captain Barnes to join you?”

“No,” he grinds out, glad he doesn't have to try to be polite to JARVIS.

That's one of the things he finds hardest in his new life, actually. He knows he has to be polite to people. He remembers his mother telling him that ( _ when he remembers his mother _ ), but he doesn't always remember how. 'Please' and 'thank you' and 'sorry I murdered your parents' are sometimes difficult to reconcile with knowing he doesn't deserve to ask for things, doesn't deserve to want things.

Bucky would argue with him. He knows that. Bucky can be so earnest, sometimes, but that disconnect – between the person Bucky wants him to be ( _ Person. Ha. _ ) and what he actually is – grates on him, feels like stinging nettles across his skin.

He can't tell Bucky about what he did. Bucky would make that disapproving face, would tell him he can't have that with Tony.

He takes nice things away from people – nice things like safety, joy, life. He shouldn't have nice things in return.

Nice things like safety, joy, and life.

Like Tony.

Tony, who is good, and kind, and generous, and who Steve only hurts. ( _ I murdered his parents. _ ) Who Steve _ can _ only hurt.

He stays there, on the floor, shaking, for hours.

It's Sam who comes to him, late in the afternoon.

“Hey, Steve. You okay?” he asks. His voice is quiet, calm, like he's trying to comfort a wild animal.

Steve feels like a wild animal, most of the time, so he can understand the impulse.

“JARVIS wasn't supposed to –”

“Actually, there's a protocol. For panic attacks in the tower.”

Steve glares at Sam, then glares at his own hand. It's shaking. It's difficult to look menacing when one's hand is shaking.

“It's a pretty lenient protocol,” Sam says, coming in to sit down on the couch a few feet away. “JARVIS waited a few hours. And he mentioned you'd already asked him not to call Bucky, so he waited until I was alone and asked me to come down.”

“I'm fine,” Steve bites out.

“You're pretty clearly not,” Sam says, voice still neutral. “Wanna tell me about what set you off?”

Steve swallows, concentrates on breathing and trying to stop his hand from shaking.

Sam waits him out. It takes twenty minutes, but he waits.

“I did something.”

“Okay.”

“I did something – wrong?” Steve's not even sure that's the word. He just knows _ he's _ wrong, and bad, so the things he does must therefore be wrong and bad.

“Okay.”

“I kissed Tony,” Steve whispers, closing his eyes. Sam hears him anyway.

“Tony Stark?” The surprise in his voice is clear as a bell.

Steve nods once, a jerk of his head, the motion stilted. “I shouldn't have – shouldn't have done that.”

Sam waits a beat. “Why not?”

“It isn't – it isn't _ right _ .”

“What, did you force him?”

“ _ No. _ ” Steve feels bile rise in his throat at the idea.

“Did he kiss you back?”

“He – maybe. I think.”

“Okay, then,” Sam says with a shrug. “You're both adults. You can make your own choices.”

“But – but what about my ...” he trails off. He's not sure what he's trying to say, but he gestures toward himself, sitting curled up on the floor and trembling.

“What? The panic attacks? That's not stopping you from living your life, man. You can still make your own choices. You just also have to make sure you're taking care of yourself. Don't do the things that make your mental health worse. That doesn't mean you can't have a relationship – even if it _ is _ with Stark.”

“I'll hurt him,” Steve says, his voice tight and quiet. “I can only hurt him.”

“So don't.”

“It isn't that –”

“Yeah, man, actually, it _ is _ that simple. If you don't wanna hurt him, don't hurt him. You've managed this long.”

“I did hurt him. I told him about – about what happened to his parents. What I did to his parents.”

Sam thinks for a minute. “Before or after you kissed him?”

“Before.”

“And he still let you kiss him? And maybe kissed you back?”

Steve doesn't respond.

“Guess that's your answer,” Sam says, leaning back.

Steve hugs his knees closer, but his hand isn't shaking anymore.

“Thanks, Sam,” he says. Polite. He can do polite.

“Any time, man,” Sam says.

“Can you tell Bucky for me?” Steve says, after a moment.

“Oh, hell no. I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole,” Sam says with a little chuckle.

“Really? But you'd be better at it.”

“Nope. But I wanna be there when _ you _ do it.”

Steve glares at him. Sam just grins, and they sit there together until Steve feels like he can get up off the floor.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Steve lies awake that night. He hasn't left his floor at all since his kiss with Tony that morning, and the only visitor he's had was Sam. He assumes Sam told everyone he was fine but feeling unsociable, which Steve thinks is maybe a bit of an understatement, but it made everyone leave him alone so he's grateful.

But now, it's dark out, and he's lying there, staring at the ceiling and feeling boxed in, as though there isn't enough air inside. He's not quite feeling trapped, but he knows if he stays there for long he'll start to feel it.

So he gets up, puts on a pair of the ultra-soft sweat pants Natasha had bought him – ( _ “You have done bad things,” she'd said, in Russian. “But that doesn't mean you have to wear scratchy pants.” He thinks he might like Natasha best, after Bucky and Tony, of course. Plus she's the only person he's ever met who can call Bucky 'James' without getting an earful. _ ) – and steps into the elevator.

“Roof,” he says curtly to JARVIS, again feeling grateful that JARVIS won't care how curt he is.

The elevator moves, and the doors open on the roof. Steve steps out, taking a deep breath of the cool, open air. He only takes a few steps before he realizes the roof isn't empty, and his steps falter. Tony is sitting on one of the chairs, wrapped in a blanket, a bottle of scotch on the table and a tumbler in his hand.

“JARVIS didn't tell me you were here,” Steve says, then realizes he should have said 'hello' first.

“He didn't tell me you were coming up, either,” Tony says, voice gravelly. He doesn't move, doesn't even turn to look at Steve. Just takes another sip from his glass and stares up at the dark night sky.

Steve feels like they should be able to see stars, little winking lights proving that not everything in the universe is terrifying and awful, but it's too bright in the city.

Then he remembers that those little twinkling lights that remind him not everything in the universe is terrifying and awful actually remind Tony that everything in the universe _ is _ terrifying and awful, because he has been trapped in that cold dark. Half his nightmares are centred around the stars.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks him, taking a hesitant step forward.

Tony lets out a sharp, bitter laugh. “God, I'm such an asshole,” he mutters to himself, sitting up. He doesn't quite meet Steve's eye, more gazing intently in the direction of Steve's right shoulder. “I should be asking _ you _ that. Are _ you _ okay?”

“I'm – I'm fine,” Steve says, and in this moment, at least, that's true.

“I should apologize to you,” Tony says, that bitter laugh cracking his voice again. “I should, but I can't bring myself to do it.”

“Why?” Steve asks. What could _ Tony _ have to apologize for? _ Steve _ is the bad one, here.

“I shouldn't have – I shouldn't take advantage of you, like that. This morning was – I shouldn't have done that.”

Steve blinks, and moves forward to sit down in the chair next to Tony's. He rubs his hands up and down his thighs, trying to keep his legs still, because they want to jiggle and shake.

“Do you – did you not want to?” He can't quite bring himself to say the 'kiss me' at the end of the question. _ Did you not want to kiss me? _

But Tony hears it anyway, like Tony hears everything Steve doesn't say.

“I shouldn't have kissed you,” Tony says. “That was wrong of me, and I'm sorry.”

“Why?”

“Why... why what?”

“Why shouldn't you have kissed me?” Steve asks. He thinks Tony is probably too kind to say _ because you're a disgusting murderer _ , so he feels safe asking the question.

“Because you can't – because it's taking advantage. Of you. Of your – you're not ready. For that. You aren't ready to tell me 'no,'” Tony says after a moment.

Steve blinks at him.

“You always treat me like a person,” Steve says, after a moment.

“You _ are _ a person,” Tony says vehemently.

“Everyone else – they treat me like I'm a wild animal that could snap at any moment, or like I'm something breakable. Well, everyone but Thor, but I don't think he knows what to do with me.”

Tony snorts.

“But you treat me like I'm a real person, like I'm a person who – who deserves things. Nice things.”

“You _ do, _ ” Tony says.

“I want that,” Steve admits, his voice falling to a whisper, like he's afraid if the universe hears him express the desire, it will take everything away from him. “I want you to treat me like that, and I want to deserve it.”

“Steve,” Tony says, voice on the verge of breaking. Steve shivers at the sound of his name on Tony's lips.

“Sam and I talked this afternoon.”

Tony blinks at the change of subject.

“I told him about – about this morning.”

“Oh, God, he's gonna set Bucky on me,” Tony sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, then taking a swig of his drink.

“No, he – he encouraged me. I thought – I'm afraid to hurt you. I'm afraid if I touch you, then the dark things in me will touch you, too, and I can't – I don't want that.”

“Oh.”

“But I do want _ you _ ,” Steve says, mustering up all his bravery, all his strength, and making his voice clear.

“Oh,” Tony says, quieter this time.

“You treat me like a person,” Steve says plaintively.

“You _ are _ a person. God, Steve, of course you're a person. You get to have desires, and wants, and choices. Of course you do.”

“Then I choose you,” Steve says, dropping to his knees again in front of Tony's chair, supplicating himself, hoping Tony will accept him.

“Stop that,” Tony says, standing, and Steve can't breathe, he'd read it wrong and Tony's rejecting him – of course he is, because Steve is _ wrong and evil and a vicious murderer _ –

“Stop kneeling, you aren't – we're equal, dammit, you don't kneel for me –” and Tony is hauling him up by the elbows, dragging him up so they're standing, Tony's eyes tracking up a few inches to his, looking up at him.

“We're in this _ together _ ,” Tony breathes, closing the distance between their mouths and dragging Steve down for a kiss.

It is warm, and slick, and Tony's throat creaks with the pleasure of it, and his tongue seeks entry into Steve's mouth. Steve allows it, of course he does, hands clenching around Tony's back and holding him closer, whimpering into the kiss because he never wants to let this go.

 

\+ + + + +

 

They stay on the roof through most of the night. They sit on one of the loungers, where they can both fit, and sometimes they kiss more, and sometimes they just sit there together, quiet in the night.

Tony falls asleep on Steve's chest, but Steve isn't ready to sleep. He just enjoys the contact, and runs the fingers of his left hand through Tony's hair, gently.

Tony never minds his left hand.

 

\+ + + + +

 

They meet on the roof every morning that week, to drink coffee and kiss. They don't tell anyone it's happening, though Steve suspects Sam is aware.

Steve thinks he doesn't deserve to be this happy, but he's afraid if he points that out, it will all go away.

“Who would have thought?” Tony says one morning, between sleepy kisses.

“Who would have thought what?”

“Me and you. Wouldn't have predicted it,” Tony says, snuggling down into his arms. Steve thinks Tony reminds him of a sleepy cat, sometimes, the way he curls into Steve for warmth.

“Sometimes I'm not even sure it's really happening,” Steve admits, voice quiet. “That maybe I never came out of the cryo tube. That this is all some Hydra trick to make me more compliant.”

Tony squeezes his hand. “It's not. Feel that? Real.”

“A hallucination would say that,” Steve says, feeling like he's cracking apart again.

Tony takes his face in both hands, letting his fingers dig into the flesh. Steve meets his eyes, and those cracking, broken parts of him still. Stop juddering and shivering and trying to fly apart.

“I am real,” Tony says fiercely. “I am real, and I am here.”

“Thank you,” Steve says. He's not sure if he's thanking Tony for being here, or for keeping his fraying edges in line. It might be both.

“Look, Steve,” Tony says, eyes dropping down to Steve's mouth, then back to his eyes. “There's something we should talk about.”

And Steve knows this is when it happens. When the good things get taken away, because he doesn't deserve them – he never did.

“I don't know – I don't know how to ask you this,” Tony continues, through the rushing in Steve's ears. “But it's occurred to me that I should. Do you – do you have any experience with this?”

Steve blinks at him. “What do you mean?”

“With – with –” Tony stops, and makes a frustrated noise before he huffs out a laugh.

“Have you ever had sex with a man before?” Tony asks, finally. “I know it's early, I know we just started – whatever it is we're doing, but I feel like if I don't have all the information then I can't – I have to know so I don't push or make you feel like –”

When Steve's heart slows, he gives Tony a gentle smile, placing his fingers on Tony's lips to quiet him.

“I have had sex with a man before,” Steve says, pressing a gentle kiss to the tip of Tony's nose before taking his hand away.

“Wait – you have?” His face pales, he looks horrified for a moment. “It wasn't – Hydra didn't –”

“ _ No _ , Tony,” Steve says. He gives Tony a look. “You know, I had a life before I became a brainwashed assassin.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. Let's all laugh at the billionaire trying to navigate sexual negotiations like he's never done it before.”

“Have – have _ you _ ever slept with a man?” Steve says, suddenly curious.

“I – _ might _ have had some adventures in college,” Tony says, blushing.

“You – really? You're going to blush on me?” Steve says, feeling a real grin spread across his face. The grin spreads wider when he realizes the feeling is something Tony brings out of him with ease. He doesn't have to work for it.

“Shaddup,” Tony says, settling back against Steve's body.

 

\+ + + + +

 

“Bucky, I have to tell you something,” Steve says, twisting the dish towel in his hands. He'd invited Bucky down to his floor for dinner, and they'd talked a little bit about how Brooklyn used to be, about baseball, and now, as they're finishing up the dishes, Steve knows he can't put it off any longer.

Bucky dries his hands on the other towel, leans back against the counter and crosses his arms in front of him, giving Steve a look that Steve doesn't want to think about too hard. It looks as though Bucky already knows what he's about to say, and he definitely disapproves.

“Okay,” Steve says, taking a deep breath. “Okay, so, we – I might be – look, this is hard.”

Bucky just watches him.

“You and Tony – you're friends, right?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, narrowing his eyes.

Steve huffs. “Okay, so, you're friends. That's – you like him?”

“When he's not being an ass, sure,” Bucky says, one side of his mouth quirking up.

“So ... I think I might ... I might have...”

A grin spreads across Bucky's face. “Okay, okay, that's enough. God, I'll put you out of your misery, punk. You like him, don't you?”

Steve sighs, with a glare at Bucky. There's no feeling behind it, but he feels he has to give it anyway.

“Yeah. I like him.”

“Are you – what, are you asking my permission to make a move? I'm not your keeper, Steve. I'm not his, either.”

“I'm not exactly –”

“No, Stevie. You make your decisions. You wanna ask him out, you do that. It's up to you.”

“I kind of ... already ... kissed him?”

“You did?” Bucky's smile seems frozen in place, waxy and unnaturally still.

“A couple of weeks ago,” Steve says. Bucky's smile starts to fade. “I don't – don't be mad. I should have talked to you first, I know, but he –”

“No, Steve,” Bucky says, placing a hand on Steve's elbow. Steve clenches his hand, then very deliberately unclenches it. He still has trouble with unexpected touches, but he's getting better.

“I'm not mad, Stevie,” Bucky says. “That's not it. I'm just – I wish you felt like you could have told me earlier.”

“I wasn't sure. That he would – be okay with it, at first,” Steve says.

“And is he?”

“Well, I spent most of the morning with his hands down the back of my pants,” Steve says, raising an eyebrow. “So I guess he's as okay with it as he's gonna be.”

Bucky bursts out laughing.

 

\+ + + + +

 

“Stop, stop, stop,” Steve says, panting, scooting away from Tony on the bed, trying to put some distance between them. Tony instantly sits up, hands raised in a non-threatening manner, pushing himself up against the headboard. Steve clambers off the bed, back on the floor, against the wall, sliding down it.

“Hey. Hey, Steve, it's okay. I'm right here, it's fine,” Tony says gently, slipping off the side of the bed and sitting on the floor across from him. Steve tries to get closer to the wall. He's shaking, and the wall is cool against his bare back.

“Shh, sweetheart, it's okay, I'm right here, you're safe,” Tony says, and the hitch in his voice makes Steve's heart want to break apart.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers. “I'm sorry, I can't – I can't –”

Tony inches closer, not paying any attention to the fact that he's in nothing but his boxers and Steve could – he could – _ break his neck, crack his head open cut him open make him bleed make him scream make him _ – “Oh, fuck,” Steve breathes, and leaps to his feet, to the bathroom, where he vomits into the toilet, hunched over and retching.

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, you're okay, you're – shit, JARVIS, what do I – Steve? Are you...?”

Steve puts up a hand, wiping his mouth with the other, sitting back against the wall, and sliding down so he can rest his forehead against the cool tile of the floor.

“I'm sorry,” he rasps, finally. “I’m sorry, Tony, I'm sorry,”

“Shh, shh, I'm right here,” Tony says, kneeling on the floor beside him. He moves forward to take Steve in his arms, and Steve shies away, even though all he wants is for Tony to be holding him.

“Can I touch you?” Tony asks after a hesitation, not moving. Just waiting for permission.

“Please,” Steve asks, and when Tony moves forward this time Steve moves toward him, and then Tony's strong, warm arms are around him and no one is being hurt.

He shivers and shakes in Tony's arms for a few long minutes, while Tony just shushes him and rubs a soothing hand up and down the back of his neck.

“Are you okay?” Tony finally asks, when Steve's breathing has started to slow down.

“I'm sorry,” Steve says, voice breaking.

“Do you know what happened?” Tony asks. “Did I – did I do something to set it off?”

Steve shakes his head. “No, it was – I was – I could have hurt you, I was right there, you couldn't have stopped me, you –”

“Shh, shh,” Tony says, holding him tighter. “No, sweetheart. Steve, no, you wouldn't have hurt me, of course you wouldn't have –”

“You couldn't have stopped me,” Steve whispers.

“Is it because – is it because you were on top?” Tony asks after a moment.

Steve shudders. “I'm sorry.”

Tony makes a sound that could almost be a laugh, but it's mangled and twisted into something painful.

“You don't – don't have to be sorry for that, sweetheart,” he says, kissing Steve's temple. It elicits another shiver, but this one feels like it's pulling Steve back into himself, into where he is right now.

“It's not your _ fault _ ,” Tony says. “They did that to you. You don't want to hurt me, I know you don't. But if it – if it would make you feel better, we don't have to –”

“I _ want _ to,” Steve says, and he knows it sounds petulant but he doesn't care. “I want _ you _ .”

Tony takes a shivery breath and kisses Steve's temple again. “God, you're amazing. Okay, Steve. We won't take it off the table. But maybe we can try it differently.”

Steve burrows his face into Tony's neck, breathing in the comforting scent of his aftershave.

“Like, maybe it'll help you if I'm on top? Or maybe neither of us? We can just be next to each other?”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs, snuffling closer.

Tony huffs out a chuckle. “Yeah? You wanna try that then?

“I should probably brush my teeth first,” Steve says sheepishly, and Tony lets out a real laugh.

“I didn't mean right _ now _ ,” he says. “Why don't we just try and get some sleep.”

“I'm not sure we should – the nightmares,” Steve admits, head down. “I don't think you should sleep here.”

“Okay,” Tony says, with a little shrug.

“I – I _ want _ to,” Steve tells him. “I do. But I don't want to hurt you.”

“It's fine,” Tony insists, tilting Steve's chin up for a gentle peck on the lips. “It can wait until you're ready.”

Steve meets his eyes, searching there for a minute. He's not sure what he's looking for – for Tony to get tired of his neuroses? He’d been waiting for this, for their first time together, to finally show Tony what he  _ does _ to Steve, how Tony makes him feel. He knows he's not normal – how could he be? He understands that. But Tony keeps putting up with it, treating him like it's okay, like he'll get better and Steve wants to. He does. He's just not sure how.

“God, you're so – you're so amazing,” Tony breathes. “All the shit, all the garbage you've been through, everything they did to you, everything they made you do – and here you are. You're so strong, Steve.”

“I'm ruined,” he whispers.

“No, no, no, you're not,” Tony says, pressing his forehead to Steve's. “You're not. Steve, I – God, you're not ruined. I promise.”

“I – you should go, probably. Get some sleep,” Steve says, though it feels like claws coming out of his throat.

“I can stay. I want to stay.”

“It's – I should be alone for a bit.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Tony.”

“Any time, sweetheart. You know that.”

They manage to stand up, and Steve hitches up his sweat pants. Tony dresses quickly, and Steve walks him to the door.

“You're sure you're going to be okay?” Tony asks him.

“Yeah. I just – I just gotta –” Steve huffs. “You know. I'll be okay.”

“Okay. Coffee in the morning?”

The air has been getting cooler in the mornings. Soon there will be frost on the roof, but Steve loves his mornings with Tony. It's the only time he feels normal.

“Yeah. I'll see you in the morning.”

Tony leans up for another kiss, and lets Steve usher him into the elevator.

Steve presses his forehead to the door jamb, sighing.

 

\+ + + + +

 

Thor goes back to Asgard the next afternoon. Steve likes Thor, but he's pretty tired of losing at Mario Kart, so he's not too upset about his departure.

 

\+ + + + +

 

“I have a mission for you,” Steve tells them a few days later. He's gathered the Avengers team in the common floor's dining room. It's time. He can't keep living with this axe over his head, knowing how dangerous he could be.

How dangerous he is.

“A mission?” Bruce asks, leaning forward on his elbows.

“Everything Hydra put inside me,” Steve explains, jaw clenching. “It's still there. All they have to do is say the goddamned words.”

Bucky blinks at him, confused.

“There's a book. It's got – everything. They say the words, and it's like a switch gets flipped. I'm not a person anymore. Just like that. I'm nothing – nothing except what they made me.”

“Where's the book?” Clint asks.

“I don't know.”

“Listen, Stevie, I love you,” Bucky says. “You're my best friend. But if there's something out there that can – we need more information. I need a better answer from you.”

“I don't _ know _ . It was – it was in Siberia. That's where the program was.”

“What program?” Natasha asks.

“The Winter Soldier program.”

“Excuse me?” Clint says, sitting up straighter. “There was a program? I thought there was just one of you. Top secret science project, serum lost, blah, blah?”

Steve looks at Tony, grimacing. He should have thought this through – warned Tony.

“There was more. Of the serum.”

“What do you mean, 'more' of the serum? It died with Erskine,” Bruce says. “I am intimately aware of the fact that the formula died with him.”

“Howard. Howard Stark. He – he figured it out. Synthesized it, or something, I guess,” Steve says, eyes darting away from Tony's. He can feel Tony's body stiffen, even though they're not even touching. “In 1991.”

Tony stands, pacing the room.

“We need more information, Steve,” Sam says, leaning forward.

Steve sighs. “Tony, I'm sorry. I have to talk about it. You can leave the room, if you need to,” he says.

Tony looks around the table, eyes bouncing all over the place, then nods curtly, stepping out the door into another room. Steve tries not to feel cold inside.

“Okay, Steve, what's going on?” Bucky asks.

Steve looks at each of them in turn. “The Winter Soldier program was – Hydra created it in the 90s,” he says. “Howard Stark managed to recreate the Rebirth serum, and Hydra sent me.I killed him and his wife, and retrieved the serum.”

No one reacts. Sam and Bucky had already been aware of Steve's role in Howard's death, and the rest of them don’t act surprised. Tony had talked to Bruce, of course, and Steve suspects Natasha's not feigning it, either – maybe Bucky told her, or maybe it's just because she's Natasha.

“They made more of us. Five more. A whole team of assassins with inhuman strength and faces no one could recognize.”

“Shit,” Clint sighs.

“They had cryo pods, so they could still – they could still...” he trails off, shrugging helplessly.

“So you're saying, what, we need to go to Siberia and wake them up? Help them, like we're helping you?” Sam says.

“No,” Steve says, voice hard. “No, they were – they volunteered. They... before the project they already had more kills than anyone in Hydra. They – _ we _ were their most elite death squad.” He shakes his head. “They can't get better.”

“Everyone can be rehabilitated,” Sam says gently, and Steve starts feeling that trapped, caged feeling again.

“Not everyone,” he argues.

“You can,” Bucky insists, leaning forward into Steve's space.

“That's not – it doesn't matter,” Steve says, wondering how this conversation managed to get away from him, rejecting their current thread. “What matters is, they're still there. They're still a threat. They speak 30 languages, they can hide in plain sight – they can infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize in a day, and you'd never see 'em coming. And if anyone finds that book, and knows what it's for, then I'll be one of them.”

“So, I guess we're going to Siberia,” Tony says from the doorway, where he's leaning against the frame. Steve jerks his head up – had Tony been there the whole time?

Tony rolls his eyes and gives Steve a gentle smile. “Of course I stayed,” he says.

_ Of course _ .

“I have to – I need to know they can't control me anymore,” Steve whispers. “I can't keep going, knowing that at any time, someone could make me –”

Tony steps forward and takes Steve's hand, gripping it tightly.

“We'll get it,” he promises. “We're the Avengers, after all.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

The Winter Soldier project took place in the side of a mountain in Siberia. The quinjet gets them there within 12 hours.

Steve spends the last 11 hours of that flight pacing the hold area, feeling like the confinement is going to splinter him apart. Tony tells him he's proud of how well Steve managed to handle the first hour.

The entrance is hidden, just a few doors in an innocuous looking rock, but Steve leads the way to them efficiently.

It's not until they get down into the lower levels, where the exam rooms line the corridor leading to the cryo pods, that Steve’s steps start to slow.

Bucky moves past him and walks straight up to one of them, face bathed in the eerie orange light. Clint walks to another and uses his hand to wipe condensation off the glass, exposing the static face of one of the soldiers.

Tony moves to a keypad station, tapping a few buttons.

“No system power,” he says, after nothing happens. He nods toward the pods. “The lights are on, though.”

Bruce moves forward, glancing at a digital read-out in front of one of the pods.

“Life signs are good,” he says, glancing up. “But we can't just unplug the units. It'll unfreeze them, but then they'll just wake up.”

“And probably be a little cranky for it,” Clint says. He shrugs. “So, what, we just – just kill 'em?”

“It doesn't seem right,” Bruce says. “They're basically defenceless right now.”

Steve glances around. These are good people. The Avengers – they're all good people. They're heroes who have saved the world, they're responsible for saving countless lives, and – and ...

And Steve's not any of those things.

They hadn't given him any weapons, and he'd appreciated that, but he doesn't need to be armed when the people around him are. He reaches for the sidearm strapped to Clint's hip, spinning as he does it, and fires off five quick high-powered shots. He blocks out the shouting, the panic, all the input except _ breathe – fire, fire, fire – breathe – fire, fire. _

He drops the gun immediately, hands up in surrender, even as Tony's tackling him in the armour, even as Bucky is shouting, Bruce is turning a little green around the edges, but his shots were true – 5 perfect head shots – so it doesn't matter.

“Jesus, Steve, why would you – fuck, you can't just – Jesus Christ,” Tony pants.

“I'm sorry. I just – it had to be done, none of you should have to do it,” Steve says, his voice strained under the weight of Tony in the suit. “It's not – I can do it, it doesn't touch me,” he says.

“Of course it does, Sweetheart,” Tony says, voice a little sad as he starts to move, pulling Steve up with him into a seated position. He leans forward, cradling Steve's cheek in his hand, pressing their foreheads together. “Of course it touches you.”

Steve shivers.

[If you have downloaded this work to a mobile app, you can click this link to see the art by Fan.](http://68.media.tumblr.com/0cb7d368709abad6f391cb520eaf7646/tumblr_ogtf92FBTb1r6wsaho1_500.png)

Once everyone calms down, Bucky starts digging through drawers.

“What's the book look like, Steve?” Natasha asks, checking some shelves at the end of the room.

“Red. With a black star on the front.”

They search for a while. They come up with nothing but some old personnel files.

“This guy,” Steve says, pointing to an identification photo. “He was in charge. He always – he always had the book.”

“Sergei Ivanov,” Natasha reads.

“JARVIS?” Tony asks. “You find him online?”

“I have information from the encrypted Hydra files that Agent Romanoff released from SHIELD,” JARVIS says. “Colonel Sergei Ivanov. Born August 17, 1957 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Currently residing in Cleveland, Ohio.”

Tony looks up, triumphant.

“So ... we're gonna go fight Hydra in Cleveland?” Sam asks, dubious.

Clint shrugs. “Welcome to the Avengers.”

 

\+ + + + +

 

They take the quinjet to Cleveland, and this time it takes 13 hours.

Steve has an easier time of it, this time. Partly because, having taken out the Soldiers, he had eradicated that particular threat as well as unleashed some of the violence always coursing under his skin. Partly, as well, because Tony sits next to him, boxing him into the wall of the hold so he's facing the room, ready for any imagined threats. Tony's presence helps ground him.

They make their way to the small clapboard house indicated in Ivanov's files. When they arrive, they go in as a team. Ivanov tries to run, but they have him surrounded, and when he comes face to face with Steve, he freezes in shock.

“ _ Soldat _ ,” he says in Russian, just before Steve's fist knocks him unconscious.

When he wakes, they let Natasha interrogate him about the book. Steve volunteers, but both Bucky and Tony refuse to let him near the man.

“I won't _ hurt _ him,” Steve argues, though he's not sure that's true.

“Nat _ will _ ,” Bucky shrugs. They wait outside.

After ten minutes or so, they hear the sound of banging inside. Bucky holds up a hand, and glances in the window.

“She's kicking a hole in the wall,” he tells them. He sounds proud, and almost smitten.

No one seems surprised, and that's just one more thing Steve loves about Natasha.

“Took you long enough,” Clint says when she comes out the door brandishing the book. Steve stares at it, almost afraid to reach out for it. Just seeing it makes his skin crawl, makes him want to break apart, screaming.

Tony saves him the decision, and plucks it out of Natasha's hand. She glares at him, but allows it to happen.

“Law enforcement's on their way to take Ivanov in,” Sam says. He glances at the book in Tony's hand. “We got a plan for that?”

“Nope,” Tony says, waggling the book a little. “That's gonna be up to Steve.”

Steve just keeps staring at that little black star, knowing that that book could destroy him.

 

\+ + + + +

 

When they get back to New York, Tony tells Steve he's going to take a shower.

“You wanna get cleaned up, too? It was a long day. I could meet you up on the roof?” he says.

Steve nods and goes to his floor to clean up.

He bathes, shaves, changes into his soft sweats, and pulls on a hooded sweatshirt Bruce had found him with a picture of a cartoon piggy bank being robbed by two other masked piggy banks with knives – the 'victim' piggy bank has defecated coins in terror. Bucky had looked at it disapprovingly at first, probably because of the knives, but Steve had just laughed and laughed, and Bruce had grinned proudly.

He takes the elevator upstairs, and Tony is waiting for him there, freshly showered and groomed as well. He's started a warming fire in the little fire pit, so his face is bathed in warm light. He has a glass of scotch in one hand, and is staring at the book on the table in front of him.

Steve sits down beside him, and Tony nudges him with his shoulder.

“How do you feel?”

“Nervous,” Steve admits.

“You did good today.”

“I'm sorry about the soldiers,” Steve says.

“Are you really?”

“No. But I feel like I should say it.”

Tony huffs. “How you feel is how you should feel. If you're not sorry – and it's okay that you're not – then you don't have to say you are. I don't need that from you.”

“I just – I should have waited. I shouldn't have just – done it.”

Tony shrugs. “Not saying a little warning would have gone amiss. Might have been nice for Bruce.”

“Yeah,” Steve grimaces.

“So,” Tony says, changing the subject. “We have the book.”

Steve nods.

“Anything special you want to do with it?”

Steve shrugs one shoulder, not sure how to answer.

“Your choice,” Tony says nonchalantly.

And Steve had known he was going to say it, of course he did, but it still feels like a gift. That he gets to choose.

This thing – this book is the thing that has taken away his choice. It's the thing that has always been there, in the back of his mind, ever since he escaped Hydra and started remembering who he was – telling him he _ doesn't _ get to choose. He can't have a life, he can't have nice things, because if anyone ever had this book, they could use that. They could take everything away again, they could make him rend it apart with his bare hands, and he just can't live with that guilt.

“It's your choice, Steve,” Tony repeats and Steve feels his chest expand, like it's not tight and sharp and hard. It's more like he can bring air in, for the first time in months.

The idea that this book controls his destiny for him has been a barb under his skin. Controlling this book gives him that destiny back – he can choose. He can control himself, his own body.

He reaches for the book. He hesitates, just a little, before he touches it – he had never, ever been allowed to touch the book. Tony waits patiently beside him, and Steve picks it up.

It's light, is the first thing he notices. Almost weightless. How such a little thing can feel so heavy on his shoulders, he's not sure.

“So, Winter Wonderland,” Tony grins beside him. “What's it gonna be?”

Steve reaches forward, tosses the book into the fire pit, and leans over to kiss Tony.


	5. Epilogue: It's Your Cold Day In The Sun

“How we doing here, Sweetheart?” Tony asks, pulling back just enough to break the kiss, but not enough to move his lips out of range entirely. It creates an odd sensation of breath and vibration across Steve's skin.

“Mmm,” Steve moans as he leans in to continue the kiss.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Tony warns, leaning back again – further out of reach this time. “We talked about this, Steve. It's important that you use your words here.”

Steve huffs out a breath, and runs his tongue across his lips as though chasing the last taste of Tony there. Tony's eyes darken at the sight, and Steve lets a corner of his mouth turn up in a teasing smile.

“I'm doing _ fine _ , Tony,” he says, sighing. “I'd be doing better if you would quit asking me if I'm okay, though.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “I just want to make sure. This is a lot, and if you're not ready...”

“Oh, I am beyond ready,” Steve breathes, tucking his hands in under the hem of Tony's shirt and letting his palms brush along warm skin, raising goose bumps in their wake. Tony shivers a little, and Steve keeps moving his hands until he's pushed Tony's shirt up, baring his chest, and then tugging on it to get Tony to lift his arms.

They're lying side by side on the bed, to try and help Steve feel as comfortable as possible. They've intentionally positioned themselves so that Steve's not being held down, and he's not above Tony, where he's likely to suffer a flashback or panic attack.

“You're incredibly pushy,” Tony mutters as he helps Steve take the shirt all the way off. He jerks his chin at Steve. “Now you.”

Steve leans forward for another quick kiss, then rolls away to pull his shirt over his head, then back so he and Tony are lying chest to chest. Tony sneaks a hand up between them and thumbs gently at Steve's nipple.

Steve hisses and arches his back a little to encourage the action. Tony licks and sucks at his neck, and Steve trembles.

“You still doing okay?” Tony asks, but this time his voice is a low rumble, with a hint of teasing behind it.

Steve takes a deep breath and works at keeping his grip on Tony's biceps from becoming painful or damaging. “I'm – I'm good,” he gasps, as Tony nips at his collar bone.

“You make sure and stop me if I do something that doesn't work for you,” Tony says as he shifts down the bed a little, mouth trailing hot, wet kisses in a path down his chest, weaving around the nipple he's not currently rolling between his thumb and forefinger. His mouth keeps moving down as he shifts down the bed, until his tongue dips into Steve's navel and Steve's hips thrust forward, just a little, of their own accord.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he breathes, trying to get his body under control again.

“Shh,” Tony soothes, petting at Steve's hip, gentling the kisses he's pressing against the smooth skin just above the waistband of Steve's sweats. “Easy, honey.”

Steve breathes out a strangled laugh. “Easy for you to say,” he mutters. “You've maybe gotten laid some time in the last 70 years.”

Tony laughs, startled. Steve loves being able to make Tony laugh like that – a real, genuine, happy laugh.

Still, the soothing touches work. Steve feels more under control, now, and cards his fingers through Tony's hair.

“Can I?” Tony asks, hooking one finger under Steve's waistband, looking up at him and meeting his eyes.

Steve nods, but just as Tony's about to pull the pants over his straining erection, Steve grabs his wrist and stops him.

“Just be careful, okay?” he breathes, trying not to be too rattled by the nerves in his belly. “I don't want to –”

“Don't worry, Steve, I'll take care of you.”

“It's _ you _ I'm worried about.”

Tony grins. “Well, don't worry, I'll take care of me, too.”

Steve holds his gaze for a moment, then lets go of Tony's wrist, slowly. Tony presses one more kiss to Steve's belly, then pulls the pants up and over his cock, baring Steve down to his thighs.

Steve expects Tony to take him into his mouth right away, but Tony starts by pressing gentle kisses across Steve's hip bones, the tops of his thighs, even at the edge of his pubic hair, before pressing a gentle kiss, and then a lick, to the shaft.

Steve lets out a moan at the contact, gasping when Tony's hand cups around his balls, weighing them in his palm.

He's got his left hand propped under his head while he lays on his side, but their position side-by-side on the bed means Tony has both hands free without having to use his core to hold himself up. He takes advantage of it by wrapping his other hand – the one not currently teasing at Steve's balls – around the base of Steve's cock, holding its length away from his body so that Tony can wrap his lips around the head. He slowly pushes down and takes more of Steve into that impossibly wet heat.

“God, Tony,” Steve murmurs, using all his willpower to hold his hips still as Tony takes him in, in, in until Steve can feel the back of his throat, and he lets out a strangled moan.

Tony hums around him, and Steve moans again, more insistently.

Tony bobs slowly, his hand covering and stroking the part of Steve's cock he can't quite reach with his mouth. His other hand continues to gently stroke and tug at Steve's balls, and after only a few minutes, Steve starts to feel them tighten.

“Oh, God, Tony – Tony, wait, stop,” he gasps, trying to hunch forward to stop the rush of sensation.

Tony backs off immediately, mouth coming off with an obscene 'pop', holding his hands up to show he's stopping as per Steve's request.

“What's wrong, babe?” Tony asks, shifting up until they're eye to eye again, concerned.

“Just – I want to – with you inside –” Steve stutters out, still breathing hard and trying to get his pulse under control.

Tony blinks at him for a moment. “I kinda thought we'd wait for that one. We don't have to –”

“No, I want to.”

Tony studies him. “I want you to be sure, Steve. I mean, don't get me wrong. The idea – _ hoo _ , boy – the idea of getting to be in you is just _ super _ ,” he says, “but don't feel like we have to do everything right now. We have time.”

“I know.”

“I mean, I'm not going anywhere,” Tony breathes, looking up at Steve, and Steve has to reach out and cup Tony's cheek at the vulnerability there.

“I'm not going anywhere, either,” Steve tells him. “And I still want you to fuck me.”

Tony shudders, eyes fluttering half-closed. “Yeah, okay, you don't have to tell me twice,”

“I actually had to tell you three times,” Steve smirks, pressing forward for a quick, hard kiss.

Tony burbles a laugh out against his lips, and Steve presses his hips forward so his cock pushes against Tony's soft pyjama pants, some kind of lightweight, soft jersey that feels great against his skin, pressing against Tony's answering erection.

“Okay, yeah, fair point,” Tony mutters, reaching down to push at Steve's pants, pushing them further down his thighs to his knees. He reaches for his own, going to shove them down, but Steve stills his hands.

“Let me,” he whispers against Tony's lips, gently pushing them down, revealing Tony's skin, smooth and golden and warm, catching on Tony's cock and making it bounce against his belly with a hiss. He presses forward so they're sliding against one another, hot, velvety skin finally against equally hot, velvety skin, and Tony gasps.

Tony pulls back and shifts down again, pushing both their pants all the way off, and Steve lifts his leg to kick them off his ankle. Tony rolls away then, and Steve's about to protest but Tony comes back as quickly as he was gone, with a little tube of lubricant and a condom from the pocket of his sweater, which had ended up on the floor before they'd even laid down.

Steve grins and presses forward for a kiss.

Tony shifts closer and lets their bodies touch from chest to knee, undulating a little so they slide together, before he wraps a hand around the back of Steve's leg and pulls it up over his hip, then runs his hand back up the back of Steve's thigh and squeezes gently at the muscle of his buttock.

Steve pushes forward, letting their cocks slide together, letting out a moan as Tony's grip shifts and tightens on his ass.

“You're still sure?” Tony mumbles against his mouth, and Steve makes an impatient sound in response.

The snap of a cap, the soft liquid noise of the lube squirting into Tony's hand, and then slick, cool fingers teasing at Steve's crack, running up and down, just ghosting over his hole.

He groans, pushing back into Tony's hand, and bends his knee, pulling Tony's hips closer to his own with his leg.

Once Tony's used the heat of Steve's own body to warm up the lube on his fingers, he gently slips one digit in, then back out to rub around the rim. Steve whimpers, whispers Tony's name, and pushes his face into Tony's neck because it's too hard to concentrate on kissing him right now when Tony's unravelling him like this.

“Shh, baby, I've got you,” Tony says, dipping that finger in again, this time sliding in a little further, and pulling back, but not out, before going in again. “I've got you.”

“You can't hurt me,” Steve groans, trying to push back against that finger, trying to get it deeper.

“I'm still going to take my time,” Tony says, still moving his hand only gently.

Steve whines again, and after a few minutes of that slick slide, Tony removes his finger again. Before Steve can really clear his head enough to protest the loss, Tony is adding more lube to his fingers and pushing in with two, and the stretch isn't quite enough to be a burn yet, but it's good, so good, so Steve leans down and takes one of Tony's nipples into his mouth, closing his eyes against the bright light of the arc reactor.

Tony gasps, and his hand jerks, fingers pushing in faster than he had probably intended, but Steve just moans and pulls the little bead between his teeth.

“God, Steve, honey, you're so warm,” Tony whispers, pushing in a third finger, faster now, and Steve sighs, because the stretch is starting to finally register as a bit of a sharp burn, and it feels good.

Then Tony's fingers are gone, and Steve whines loudly when Tony pulls his hips back, but then he hears the sound of the condom wrapper and he takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself while Tony slicks his cock with the lube. He hitches Steve's leg a little higher on his hip and tilts himself back to get a good angle, and then he's pushing in, thicker than those three fingers had been, hotter and smoother, and Steve pants, breathless, as Tony keeps pressing forward until he's seated all the way inside.

They both stop, still and breathing hard for a moment.

“God, this is going to be over way faster than I want it to be,” Tony mutters, glancing up at Steve's face.

Steve blinks, trying to focus. “S'okay, Tony. Just – just move, wanna feel you –”

So Tony shifts back, just a little, and then pushes forward again, and Steve feels stretched, full, warm from the inside out the way he only does when he's touching Tony.

Tony shifts again, changing the angle, and thrusts forward again. Steve lets out a sigh, just enjoying drifting on the feel of Tony in him, until Tony changes his angle once more, thrusts forward and sparks fly out, from somewhere deep inside Steve, out to his toes and his fingers, flickering behind his eyes, and he makes a sound he's not sure he's ever made.

“There it is,” Tony grins, pushing forward again. Steve whines, feels that sparking across his skin again, and clenches his fingers into Tony's biceps.

“Wha – what is that?” Steve gasps out, trying to thrust back on Tony's cock and feel it again.

Tony stills. “I thought you said you'd done this before?”

“I did – but it never – it was never like that,” Steve groans, pushing back again and feeling it light up behind his eyes.

Tony snickers a little, and it pushes him in deeper. “That, my dear, would be your prostate. No one ever...?”

“I said I'd had sex with a man before, I didn't say I'd done it a lot.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “And apparently not with anyone who knew how to –” he thrusts again, and Steve cries out “– take care of you properly.”

Then Tony is thrusting in earnest, moving steadily, and Steve is keening, gasping, tensing and relaxing his hands as he tries to get used to the feeling of Tony pushing into him and sliding across that amazing spot over and over.

He's trembling, and he reaches down for himself, wrapping his hot, calloused right hand around his own cock, squeezing and stroking fast, gasping and moaning as Tony thrusts faster.

“That's it, gorgeous, you let it go,” Tony whispers, the words jarring with the movement of his body.

Steve strokes faster, feeling his body tense, like his head is floating, vision blurring at the edges until he makes a noise he can't describe, vision whiting out completely, feeling himself pulse in his hand and then he's shivering, gasping, coming hard between them, and Tony is crying out, too, thrusting in hard and then _ grinding _ , and Steve gasps again, feeling like he's broken apart.

They slowly relax into one another, Tony reaching down and holding the condom on as he pulls out, slow, so slow, and Steve makes a soft noise at the loss. Tony shifts up, bringing their lips together, and Steve returns the soft kiss, just touching their mouths together because he doesn't have the energy for more than that.

They lay there, breath evening out together, in the wreckage of their lovemaking for a long time.

“How do you feel, sweetheart?” Tony finally asks, voice hoarse and ruined.

Steve shifts closer and wraps his arms around Tony, ignoring the mess of his own release between them, on his hand, and on the blankets.

“Safe,” he answers.

 

_**END.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Art is here:
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://fantalaimon.tumblr.com/post/153385970535/breaking-hiatus-slightly-to-post-my-art-for-the)  
>   
> _“You and your people are hunting me,” Rogers says, voice gravelly._  
>  “I wouldn't categorize it as hunting, exactly,” Tony says.  
> [Art by Fan](http://fantalaimon.tumblr.com/post/153385970535/breaking-hiatus-slightly-to-post-my-art-for-the)
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://cazdraws.tumblr.com/post/153386210501/in-an-alternate-universe-steve-rogers-fell-from)  
>   
> [Art by Cazdinal](http://68.media.tumblr.com/74c4da93d083c0dc62e160dbbc7982d3/tumblr_ogu954cKdM1tqwrxgo1_500.png)
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://cazdraws.tumblr.com/post/153386210501/in-an-alternate-universe-steve-rogers-fell-from)  
>   
> [Art by Cazdinal](http://68.media.tumblr.com/4e9f4f536596cc1ebc2a2bba0ed23551/tumblr_ogu954cKdM1tqwrxgo2_500.png)  
>  
> 
> [](http://fantalaimon.tumblr.com/post/153385970535/breaking-hiatus-slightly-to-post-my-art-for-the)  
>   
> _”Of course it touches you.”_  
> [Art by Fan](http://fantalaimon.tumblr.com/post/153385970535/breaking-hiatus-slightly-to-post-my-art-for-the)


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